How Lucky You Are
by Berouge
Summary: How lucky you are to have friends who love you for who you are inside. Behind every great person, there are the people who help prop them up when they are weak, sick, or drunk. Brilliant Sherlock Holmes is as only as infallible as the people who believe in him. But before John grounded his feet more securely to Mother Earth, Molly had been instrumental into smoothing things down.
1. Chapter 1

How lucky you are to have friends who love you for who you are inside. Behind every great person, there are the people who help prop them up when they are weak, sick, or drunk. Brilliant Sherlock Holmes is as only as infallible as the people who believe in him. But before John grounded his feet more securely to Mother Earth, Molly had been instrumental into smoothing things down. She was there from the beginning. Taking the slack and hauling the great git to front lines of decency.

A/N: This story is...well a fluke. An aberration. Something I NEVER intended to write. It's mostly done, but I keep tweeking things around. Also, you all know Molly about as well as I do- the correct answer is, not very well. She is hopelessly enamored with our Sherlock, but that's all we ever see. As of right now. But she has 'always counted' and he has 'always trusted her'. That sounds like history to me. So let's see what led to this foundation of trust from one individual who doesn't give away his trust so easily.

There are mistakes and they are obviously not mine, but I will allow them to be left for you to steam over! Think of them as little hugs of affection.

_******Italics mean past events._

**How Lucky You Are**

By: Berouge

Molly shifted a huge stack of cadaver files on her desk, searching half-heartedly for the one on St. Bart's most recent occupant in the morgue. Gang violence had ripped a hole into an unassuming family's life, and Molly could barely pull the lead out to find the appropriate case file to present to the grieving next of kin to show that London's finest were doing their part, in a clear demonstration of competency, at catching the victim's murderer.

It was difficult to even care beyond the basic empathy a kind person felt for a total group of mourning strangers.

These last few months had been…so _hard_. So unfamiliar and lacking the usual vibrancy that she was accustomed to experiencing. To think, a staple in her life that was so believably infallible, so stubborn in its staying power that she had foolishly assumed it would always just…_be_, was suddenly gone.

She was trained at this point in her career here at the honorable St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Research Center, that the unexpected came with the territory of pathologist, not that the job itself brought oddities through her door outside the occasion messy murder or drowning, but rather a certain individual who had holed up and put down stakes in her lab like he helped pay the rent. Molly was young, naïve to a certain admitted degree, and idealistic to a rather unfortunate fault in that she always had a default set to look for the best in people.

Something that was easily exploited, or so she had been cruelly informed not to terribly long ago. She kind of missed the bi-weekly reminders, brutal or not.

So when one normal, boring Tuesday yawned open, several months into her new job at the recently minted winner of the London City Morgue contest no hospital in their right mind really wanted to win- where every suspicious dead person was gift wrapped and delivered with insistent demands for immediate answers- brought the likes of Sherlock Holmes barreling through her double gray doors with equally matching large red signs that had a strict CERTIFIED PERSONNEL ONLY splayed across them, trailing a puce faced Detective Inspector, and two uniformed lackeys from New Scotland Yard, green-as-grass Molly Hooper had easily acquiesced to his demand to see the poor individual who had been discovered in a dumpster not far from one of the River Walk's high tourist areas almost two weeks ago. Somehow, the discoloration of the hair follicles combined with location of the dumpster and minus that time from the victim's last moments, the tall stranger in the Belstaff Millford managed to blast open what was a rapidly cooling, dead-end case that Scotland Yard was swiftly losing a foothold in, and solve it in under forty-three seconds of being shown key pieces of evidence. Or so the DI had reluctantly informed, or re-confirmed, to her as Sherlock had so pompously corrected for the room at large.

Her shy astonishment for his keen eye had been her undoing, for he seemed to have sensed a certain, willingness to please, and immediately asked for a few spare bits for an experiment he was doing on a quite possibly illegal amounts of highly concentrated acids.

It was a bizarre request, and one she couldn't meet.

"_I can't send fingers home with you, Mr. Holmes. That is against health code regulations as well as a level five bio-hazard." She had wearily explained, feelingly rather terrible about saying 'no' to such a simple, to her at least, request._ _She did prepare human specimens for the Medical schools in London and sometimes Oxford, after all. Requests for body parts where just part of the job._

_A melodramatic sigh, followed by a litany of reasons why he had higher hopes for their partnership met her denial of potentially, freshly severed fingers. "It appears that I was mistaken." He said in an 'oh-well' kind of voice. A disappointed kind of voice._

_Which was a whole different type of weakness she had troubles suppressing- Molly hated letting people down._

"_I can't let you take them home…but, you could work on that here if you wanted." She offered in a breathless rush. "There's more than enough room in my lab, because I'm the only one down here. It's my lab, you see. I'm the head pathologist for this section of Bart's morgue." She had rambled on in effort to not only explain herself, but also sell the idea._

It got lonely in the bowels of the morgue a lot. Bernard, the senior pathologist of Bart's who, other than herself, had any remote desire to actually want to work solving the horrific last minutes of life for one too many individuals lying on one of the cold slabs in the morgue, was in the twilight years of his career and thusly was focusing more on instructing newbies in the classroom rather than gathering the secrets of the dead. So she was on her own near constantly for easily twelve hours a day, seven days a week. It was becoming depressing taking a lunch with no one but corpses for company, and here she had someone who A- was highly intelligent, B- worked with the cops to solve cases, and C- wasn't squeamish about halfway decayed bodies.

He was perfect, and she was desperate for some interaction from something alive that could also talk back! Aloysius, the morgue's pet goldfish just wasn't cutting it anymore.

_His reluctance was obvious. Standoffish even. "I don't work well with others." He had slowly informed her._

"_Oh, but we'd just be working near each other! There's plenty of room to not be under foot."_

_He not only didn't seem convinced, he had actually turned without comment to walk out the doors._

"_We also just got a new electron microscope capable of fluorescence interference contrast microscopy." She added offhand, and like a dog with a Beggin' Strip, he was snuggled up to the counter, spinning dials and making slides of some mold she had cultivating for pathology reasons. _

Later, she would look back and quietly ask herself what she had been thinking. Sherlock was like a vampire in his regard for coming and going as he pleased once invited over the threshold, ignoring clearly posted signs and even sometimes waking her up in the middle of the night to come open the lab up- which she was embarrassed to say, she did often enough that she should have gotten a damn plaque. Or been committed for being a sucker.

Why?

Because she was a fool of girl at heart.

He was so unlike anyone she'd ever met. He was…well, brilliant. Cleverer than anyone she had even heard of outside Einstein or Stephen Hawking, he was able to deduce, as he put it, her life story down to her rather pathetic track record of relationships in the last three years since graduating medical school. He was like a steamroller in his methodic ironing out every one of her facets.

It was incredible…and incredibly mortifying. He had implied she overtaxed herself for mere crumbs of affection, and it had taken her almost a week to respond to that blatant misimpression.

"_I don't come across as desperate!" She had muttered sullenly, so far down in denial, she could almost see the pyramids as she hid behind one of the blood centrifuges. _

"_Yeah, you do." He rejoined lazily as he slipped a slide under the high-resolution microscope. "It's rather unbecoming of you."_

_She could still remember that heated wash of embarrassment. "It's just called showing interest." She mumbled as she turned and tried to evaporate amongst the glass beakers full of colored solutions she should have been utilizing to confirm Mr. Kennewick Dunderfik had indeed died of a heart attack, and not asphyxiation brought on by an overdose of his heart medication. _

"_Showing interest is a smile, or an exchange of phone numbers. Setting up your entire date schedule for the foreseeable future at the coffee shop counter is overkill." He intoned in a distracted voice as he fiddled with the focus._

"_I did that once!" She said, mortified that he somehow knew about that incident._

It was also the last time she took the tips from her Cosmopolitan magazine seriously ever again.

He swiftly became a fixture in her working life. He kept a random schedule, but that didn't stop her from seeing him several times a week. He'd fairly explode through her doors in whirl of energy, Belstaff, and talent, leaving her shell shocked and highly impressed with his work on lord knew what. She had quickly realized he rarely worked exclusively on police matters while entombed in her lab. She really didn't know what he did aside from 'experiment'….kind of like Dr. Frankenstein, what with his body part fixations and all.

A consulting detective is what he called himself- he invented the job, apparently- and would rile up the hard working folks down at the MET enough that she started getting a few desperate calls every now and then several months into their little arrangement to help draw Sherlock's intensity elsewhere.

Apparently Sherlock, much like proper nine year old boys everywhere, could be easily seduced into compliance if the opportunity to receive a mason jar of eyeballs were likely to be had. Molly quickly figured, as did the long suffering folks at Scotland Yard (granted they only knew she could, her methods were dubious at best and they were grateful enough to carefully not ask questions or squint too hard in St. Bart's direction), that she could sway a boisterous and highly annoying Sherlock with doggie bags full of level five bio-hazards.

Again. It was like signing a high risk contract with the Devil in that any, and all future attempts, at with-holding the goods were immediately cried foul on or completely circumvented. Taking inventory on a consistent basis became a must for her, if she planned on returning all remains to waiting families. She refused to admit how many times she had to check out a body that was, ahem, missing an organ here or there.

_-"There had better be all of Mrs. Shelliton's toes present and accounted for, Sherlock. Her family is coming to claim the body for the service."_

"_Does her family really need all ten to properly mourn her?"_

_-"Please tell me you didn't take the livers for the medical school students."_

"_I merely rendered them useful beyond whatever capacity being shipped off to a classroom full of mooncalf simpletons high on dreams of mediocre medicine could hope to procure."_

_-"You can't take a head home, Sherlock! What on Earth would you do with it?"_

"_Among other things? Place it harmlessly in the refrigerator to freak out one incompetent Detective Inspector."_

He was frustrating, cantankerous, unquestionably rude, and completely ignored all social graces, protocols, as well as clearly posted, readable signs that asked for people to not do or go somewhere. He liked to be the clear, and unmistaken, shining star on the IQ tree in a crowded room, and to Molly's comprehension…that was practically every time he deigned to willingly be around people, which was usually to flat out blast them into awareness of his brilliance. It was a spiraling circle of "Sherlockian douchbaggery", to quote one Detective Inspector Lestrade. Sherlock Holmes took being a narcissist to a professional level of art and infuriation for anyone who had to suffer through his own personal brand of strip search and seizure, or had front row seats to one of his, now infamous, tantrums.

Molly herself had been on the receiving end of multiple tirades from him since letting him into her lab. He would fly into a tizzy, a frenzy of frothy indignation at her mere presence, accusing her of upsetting his concentration, or some such nonsense. It was HER lab, she wanted to remind him, but she wasn't exactly the most self-assured, especially when it came to him. She usually chose to allow other's to have things their way, just to avoid confrontations.

Molly could be a 'chicken shit', as her sister had been known to say.

Sherlock, in particular, had no trouble stampeding all over anything- everything- she had to say. Or he just flat out ignored her…like he did to her superiors when they had first caught wind that he was loitering around down in the morgue because he was, firstly, non-essential personnel- cough, didn't work there- and secondly, he had access via Molly to their precious body part supply. A big no, no, that had led to one hell of a 'to do' that nearly cost Molly her job if not for a kindly act of heroism from NSY, explaining emphatically and articulately how 'very important Molly's work was to Queen and country'. That apparently was code for babysitting a twenty-something brain child. She should be offended. She really should.

Not that she minded. Sherlock wasn't really all that bad normally. She let him have it his way, because honestly, what was the point in fighting? He might cure cancer accidently while trying to splice some freaky disease just because he wanted to see what it did if exposed to babies hearts or something equally batty- and she would totally include her name under his as aiding in the cure, hissy fit or no. He would probably be pissed that he mistakenly cured cancer instead of whatever it was he originally surmised to happen.

He was extremely useful in helping her determining cause of death if she asked. He could be quite funny too, when he wanted too. Which was usually at the expense of others, but Molly never claimed to be a saint. She tolerated his choppy mood swings and eccentric fits- something she had achingly diagnosed early on in their relationship as the familiar symptoms of possible drug abuse. The first time he had disappeared, Molly became concerned as she had not seen him in nearly a month. He had been known to bugger off for a couple weeks, but never so long as a whole month. He wasn't predictable, nor routine, but working in a morgue had made Molly understandably paranoid. Fearing he might soon turn up as a stiff on her examination table, Molly had put in a call to DI Lestrade going into the fourth week of the Sherlock-draught, only to be met with the stomach clenching news that he had been admitted to a rehab facility because of an accidental overdose.

That was first time she had cried for him. She was no fool to drug abuse after all as she had a brother die suddenly from a Heroin overdose when she was eighteen.

When he had eventually sprung up, after a four month sabbatical (apparently) against his will, he was well put together, smartly dress, and furious. She had been overjoyed to see him, which had caught him off guard as she shoved him bodily down in front of the last experiment that he had been working on before his leave of absence had silenced the morgue into its pre-Sherlock state. She had left it as he had, and he seemed pleased that she had taken care to not disrupt what apparently was a successfully intense colony of some rare bio-luminescent fungus he had cultivated from…who really knew where. Probably gum scrapping out from under Lestrade's desk. They had quickly fallen back into their easy norm of him largely ignoring her, and she being happy that she wasn't alone in her city of the dead.

He could still be cruel, though, with that sharp tongue of his, and she would have banned him-security intervention, landmines and all, if he had not shown immediate awareness that he had gone too far.

He had intentionally made her cry.

Molly was not stupid, since she did graduate with flying colors from one of the top medical schools in the country, after all. She was a little lost on how to properly date successfully, but hey, no one's perfect. However, a keen understanding that she could be a mudroom door mat- UNWILLINGLY- if she wasn't on her toes, and several instances of being used, had left her rather raw to the implications of others that she was only good for getting things from, that she didn't matter really beyond a quick homework guru that always had the answers, or a test prep magician with her near notorious study sheets that could guarantee at least a B + if the individual applied themselves beyond a pulse. He had insinuated several things on her competency- that was okay, it happened regularly on the job as it came with the medical field as whole- and that she was being a pest while he was trying to deduce something so beyond her reach- typical with him- she should just be lucky the world continued to spin on- …okay?- and that he had better things to focus on then her near constant humming and since she wasn't contributing she should, in a sense, get the hell out- that had hurt.

Being told she wasn't worth having around, even though it sounds ridiculous, really was a direct hit to her internal castle's keep. He knew that she had issues with abandonment- he had identified her with it, which had curiously made her go and have it confirmed by a real Ph.D. that had taken her two weeks and three personality tests instead of a five minute body scan by Sherlock Bloody Holmes. So why he decided to zero in on the kill had left her upset beyond measure.

She had done nothing but smile in his general vicinity, and that is what had set him off.

He had been in a mood all week over some case that even he, shockingly, was having little luck with. One of his rare failures, it would turn out. But she had been in high spirits because her sister was flying home for a visit and this happiness that was incorporeal, odorless, and intangible to touch to all but the likes of her, had offended him, positively lit a flame under his poor attitude and blew it sky high like an artillery shell during New Years. He turned, cool eyes flashing in anger she had seen glimpses of, but never directed at her, and sank his legendary teeth into a rant so awful, she crumbled rapidly before him. To her credit, she lasted longer than Mark Dillions, in Haematology, Tara Smoot in reception, and several PC's and DS's on the Yard before she shed her first tear.

"_-And furthermore you're continual and near instant aspiration to- what are you doing?" His voice dropped at once as the maddening intensity of his eyes cooled._

"_What does it look like, stupid?" She sniffled rhetorically, rubbing violently at her eyes as she quickly moved to put doors and walls between them. Just because he made her cry, didn't mean she was going to stand there and let him watch her dissolve into a mess of tears and wounded feelings._

_He followed her desperate flight into the morgue, never letting her achieve the solitary solace to regain her composure. Probably because he wasn't used to actually sticking around to observe what happened to the people he verbally decimated habitually. "Why?" Is all he asked as he skirted around one of the examination tables to get a better look at her countenance, almost crouching with the most fascinated expression on his face. _

"_Because you're being intentionally terrible." Her voice wobbled, as his face blurred, and she turned again. "Go away."_

_He didn't really give the impression that he was troubled by her aversion to being watched, her wish for him to take a hike, but he did seem to consider…something. "I didn't mean-" He started before his sentence paused mid delivery. Looking a tad confused, he opened his mouth but nothing came immediately out. The third time was the charm though. "I didn't mean too?" He questioned as he cut off her escape again with his stupid six foot body, in his stupid fashionable suit, with his stupid constipated look of confusion. _

_Molly blinked, and two fat tears rolled down splotchy red cheeks. "Don't hurt yourself now." She glowered at him as she prepared to make a break for the exit. Maybe some time in the ladies? Where theoretically he shouldn't go- signs seem to prove useless against him- when his hand had shot out and wrapped around her bicep in a surprisingly secure grip. _

"_Molly." Was all he said, a lost look shadowing his face._

_She sucked a sob down. Why was she reacting like this? It confused her…which was okay because he looked like he roaming the forest without a guide. The git. His slip-up was, apparently not rebooting his system like in people who normally used this time to apologize. She had a feeling he really did need a guide._

_She was too damn nice._

_Taking a shuddering breath, she looked up into closed-off steel blue eyes. "You aren't supposed to intentionally hurt friends, Sherlock. Even if they are being a 'nuisance' to you." _

_She watched him mouth the word 'friend' as the hand wrapped around her arm tightened ever so slightly. As if he was a foreigner to her land of social interaction and companionship and was just learning a new word. Molly stifled a snort. What a rather astute observation in this case._

_He seemed in pain as he took a breath. "My apologies." He was stiff in his delivery, like it wasn't a word he used…ever._

_She could believe that. But he was…trying. And she was too much of a soft touch to ignore his struggle for long. "You need to check your slides. Data is escaping your observation as we speak."_

_He jumped, whipping his head around to narrow his gaze on his microscope through the morgue's windows into the lab. He seemed to apprate to his experiment, a flurry of dramatics taking place silently past swinging doors._

It wasn't the last time he'd lose his temper around her, but never again did he focus the spear of his considerable fury at her. This was rather impressive of him, considering he flew into a tizzy of righteous indignation like it was his job.

No, he saved that anger that seemed to have an endless supply mostly for incompetent Detective Inspectors, big-nosed brother's, and moronic homo sapiens that were lucky not to be taken out by granny barely visible behind the wheel as she putted off to afternoon tea.

Weeks slipped into months with their working situation. Lestrade, who she had come to know rather well as he martyred himself frequently for the Yard's reputation by bringing Sherlock onto the more sinister, difficult, and confusing cases that needed answers. Sherlock was, well…not flighty, but purposefully forgetful. As in he would sometimes turn a blind eye to taking bits home with him. Ignore Bernard's huffy DON'T TOUCH SHIT signs, and unfortunately for London's exhausted Scotland Yard workers, not tell them when he solved something. At first, it had confused her. Sherlock would swan into the lab, all secrets, Belstaff, and smolder smugly in his self-assurance that he was a brilliant git that knew things others did not. Which was relatively commonplace at this juncture in Molly knowing him, the only difference being that he would mutter out loud to himself as he was putting that giant brain of his to task solving mysteries, and then when he did finally solve the puzzle, he would positively preen over his microscope and slides full of effluvia of a drown victim. Molly would usually aid his ridiculous sense of entitled glorification by letting him take a doggie bag of whatever he wanted as a reward to himself. Probably not a good idea in the long run for her career, but he seemed to take particular delight when he'd select the squishy spleens heading to Oxford, or the brain of person who died from contracting rabies. Plus, how would anyone know if these things even existed unless she took pains to document them? She just used other bits instead.

Like a moderately reliable egg timer, however, Lestrade would eventually turn up, looking for Sherlock.

"_He's a sniffer dog you guys can't seem to get the hang of." Molly chirped by way of greeting as Lestrade pushed his way through her double gray doors. _

_Sherlock huffed impatiently from his stool by the acid cabinet, while he absentmindedly tapped away on his phone._

"_Yeah, well, I'm about ready to affix a shock collar around his neck." Lestrade seemed enthused as the idea took hold. "A sixty volt seems like a nice, round number for silencing him for good."_

"_It's not the volts that do the killing, nitwit." Sherlock grumped._

_Molly snickered. "He's been waiting for almost two hours for you to finally show up."_

"_Shut it." The stool by the acid snapped._

_Lestrade grinned at her. "My apologies. How rude. Did he say?"_

_She pursed her lips as tilted her head toward the sullen six foot child currently glowering back at her. "Well…I'm a little shaky on the details, but…" A dark brow arched challenging at her, and Molly bit her lip. "I'm gonna say it was the neighbors female something…like a cousin? You know the one with the hedgehog collection?"_

_Lestrade blinked before turning to see what Sherlock had to say. _

"_Closer than the all-inclusive idiotic body of MET could gather. It was the neighbor's daughter who was raising the hedgehogs. Apparently the victim was highly allergic to the little beasts…" and off he went, following his impressive logic at a speed no average person could actively think at. He rode his deduction flat out, spinning a tale of classic revenge for, not money, but retribution on a slight having to do with a default loan on the hedgehog breeding business that lost several prized rodents and thousands of pounds._

_Molly blinked. "It sounds like a ridiculous reason to kill someone in such a messy, nasty manner. A hedgehog?"_

"_People are ridiculous." Sherlock shrugged, as if that answered all questions having to do with why people did what they did._

The secret with figuring Sherlock out was to listen to what he was saying even when he wasn't deliberately trying to say anything. He talked out loud to himself, or Aloysius, and if one paid any medium of attention to him, he wasn't too outlandish to actually follow his erratic train of thinking. This didn't work all the time, but she was getting rather good at pegging when to put in a call to their favorite DI when twirling overcoats and flashing self-satisfaction threatened to suffocate the lab.

Sherlock was picky about who he showed off for, and could give a rats _arse_ when someone outside of Lestrade was sent to collect whatever information he had cultivated for himself, while simultaneously belittling the hell out the poor sod that dared to walk through her doors seeking answers. He just didn't care about public opinion or graded group work.

He just wanted to know why things happened and that was basically it.

This excuse, one that only she had ever tried to give on his behalf, rarely soothed any ruffled feathers. Her efforts to try and make any and all transactions that took place in presences between him and…anyone else, usually helped. A good few times they resulted in security being called or more regularly slamming doors.

Sherlock really couldn't seem to be bothered to care who cussed him out. They didn't really appear on his blip screen even when shouting across the room. He was known to wander off bored mid rant when anyone outside of Lestrade actually attempted to dress him down.

Which, if she thought about it, really blatantly demonstrated who Sherlock liked. If he withstood a good yell, it meant he liked you enough that he let you have your say. Even if it didn't change anything in his eyes.

He never bothered to entertain those he didn't see worth time or space.

This normally resulted in anger being directed at her, which she didn't think was fair, but then again, nothing with Sherlock ever really was. She would apologize for him, and they would slam her doors in a fit of rage.

Only once had it gone too far.

A case that involved a serial…rapist murderer or something- they all kind of tended to blur after a while- had sprung up, which positively delighted Sherlock in a way that brutal mystery slayings only could. He was fidgety and wordy and dramatic. Two weeks, one shootout and then…nothing. The murders stopped and London was looking hopefully toward an ashen faced Scotland Yard for answers- of which they really couldn't give because they didn't know either. Sherlock had been overly pleased with himself.

"_Please tell me you didn't kill anyone." Molly sighed as she reached for her phone to put a call into Lestrade, already reading the signs that this open case was shut, but had, once again, been carelessly not given over to the proper authorities._

_He was watching something in a petri dish with focused intensity. "I didn't kill anyone." He parroted back at her, which brought a sigh up from her long suffering soul. He really was something else entirely…_

_He didn't seem the sort that could easily kill, despite what some wagging tongues insisted. He wanted answers, not lives for secrets. Dead bodies could only tell so much, and dealing with live people meant that he had to deal with sentiment, something she had come to understand he despised with the full passion of a purist of whatever school of thought he spent his days immersed in. Killing people involved too much interaction and not enough thought, of which, he had little interest. However, he did have an almost blasé sort of bearing for pushing the limit where endangered lives were concerned, but she did not believe him capable of actually, willingly taking one without the provocation of a serious threat to his person or others. _

"_Well, anyway, I have to give them a call to report what I found on the Westbourne Green case." She said by word of warning. _

_He didn't even grunt, so engrossed in what he was doing. She shrugged, placing the call._

_Unfortunately for her- and everyone soon to be involved- Lestrade was detained elsewhere in the city dealing with media issues. They were sending over a new guy- or at least new to her- to handle the Sherlockian shenanigans. _

_She had tried to warn them. They should have known better._

_So when a new face pressed through the double gray doors later that afternoon, Molly had tried smoothing any and all potential problems ahead of time. She was polite, and offered to get Bill Anderson, who happened to be the Forensics guy in the Serious Crimes Unit, some coffee, but that was as far as she ever really got._

_Sherlock seemed annoyed at this point. His snails were being too predictable and Anderson's presence seemed to agitate him even more than people normally managed while trying._

_Anderson, who Molly at first thought was cute, quickly soured any good points he had going for him with his entitled attitude to where exactly he thought Sherlock should be put with his 'freaky abnormalities'._

"_That crack pot have the answers? Some of us have real work to do." It was the first thing out his mouth, and Molly blinked in surprise, and irritation._

_Sherlock had his moments, but that was uncalled for. "Normally, people extend more tact when asking for something." She tried not to snip. But with her voice, it sounded like a kitten was trying to be reprimanding._

_Anderson sneered down at her. "There's nothing normal about that weirdo."_

_She tightened her hands, which had wadded into white knuckled fists in her lap. "Mr. Anderson, that is highly uncalled for." Her voice shook as she stared hard into his mean dark eyes. "If you continue to be flagrantly disrespectful in here I will have security-" That was as far as she got before he stepped forward and positively loomed over her and her desk._

"_You'll what? Have me shown out." His flashed his teeth and she braced herself. "I'll have you know, that because of him, we lost several key pieces of evidence, but managed to locate several, highly illegal parts to what could lead to a criminal conviction for you that would effectively end your career forever here at St. Bartholomew's, or any medical institution, ever. So I would think twice about trying to defend him." Molly felt her face drain as she stared wide eyed up at him, practically cowed in his nonexistent shadow._

_At this point, Sherlock lost his patience and what followed was one of the most explosive fights she had ever witnessed with him. He was detached, cold like she had never seen, and ruthless with that bladed tongue of his as he stared down his nose at the much shorter man, who only bristled like an angry cat._

"_I can end this for you. Both of you so easily your heads would spin! All it would take is a few words into the Chief Superintendent's ear and poof! Your career as a pathologist-"he jabbed a finger at her, "And your plaguing existence in general will vanish behind a wall with bars on the windows." _

_Sherlock's eyes narrowed into mere slits as he watched the shorter man with clear dislike. "I wouldn't imagine an imbecile with an IQ devoid of substantial numeric weight could grasp a concept so perspicuous that primary school children understand, so let me spell it out plainly- you are not the threat you laughably believe you are." He breathed as he stepped in closer. "So stop trying to be." The way he was watching Anderson reminded Molly strongly of a predator watching its next meal struggle. _

_It was actually frightening, because Sherlock was an unknown variable with practically no empathy. Anderson wouldn't stand a snowballs chance in the furnace of Hell!_

_Anderson was desperately trying to maintain a strong front, but if Molly could see the fractures, it was nothing but confirmed blood in the water for the six foot shark in front of him. _

_Having enough of the scary encounter, Molly pushed her way in between them. Anderson backed off at her touch, but Sherlock wouldn't budge an inch. "Okay, enough. Mr. Anderson, get out of my morgue before I call security and tell them you're sexually harassing me." She barked at him, while pressing a hand into Sherlock's chest to keep him back. If anything, he leaned a little farther forward as Anderson made to say something. "You have less than ten seconds." She waved her mobile at him, scalping whatever it was he had been about to say, as she flipped it open and pressed a number for the switchboard._

_Anderson turned and stalked furiously from the lab, all but banging the double doors off the walls as he stormed down the hallway. _

_Molly had been shaking as she put the phone up to her ear, Sherlock hadn't yet moved and she felt a little easier with him at her back as she made her call. When Lestrade answered, she told him that Anderson was absolutely not allowed to return to her lab or morgue ever again without Lestrade present. That if he was smart he would send someone, anyone else, in the future. Sherlock seemed back to his version of prosaic operation by the time she concluded her call and waited semi-patiently as she haltingly uncurled her stiff-fisted grip in his dress shirt so he could flounce back over to his snails._

The next time she happened to see Anderson, she had been hoping that last time she saw him in the morgue, would have literally been the last time she saw him. He was such a…goon. He hated Sherlock- called him all sorts of terrible things that did not really faze the big genius beyond being ticked that Anderson was wasting his precious time and sucking air out of the room.

Molly didn't like him. When Lestrade had finally gotten around to asking her about what happened that day in the lab, she told him as much. She didn't want to have to deal with Anderson again, and that Sherlock had been more hostile than she had ever witnessed.

She didn't like seeing people threaten her friends.

_Molly was wrapping up for the night, storing her autopsy logs away and shutting down and locking up the morgue before mooching back into the lab to make sure there was nothing particularly volatile left in containers that could only take so much abuse. Shutting down several microscopes that she had been using to test bone residue samples for_ _Orthopaedics, and logging out of her computer, she turned to gather her bag and phone up from behind her desk when she spotted it._

_Sherlock's phone was sitting on Aloysius's fish tank hood. _

_Molly frowned as she slung her bag over her shoulder; Sherlock was rather weird about that phone of his. He never went anywhere without it that she had seen. Even the bathroom._

_Not that she could point fingers at that quirk. _

_Walking over to it, she hefted the blackberry into her hands and immediately felt like she was intruding, that she would get in trouble for touching his phone. Pursing her lips, she tried to shove that feeling away, considering how many times he had used her phone to send texts to who knew where. _

_Debating whether to leave it where she found it, Molly silently remembered that he would just hassle her in the middle of the night to come open up so he could retrieve it…and then use the excuse to start one of his experiments. _

_Yeah, she wasn't interested in hiking down here at one a.m. anytime soon. Sighing, she decided to return it to him, seeing that it would be the choice that led to the fewest amount of interrupted sleep hours._

_She pocketed his phone and trudged out the double doors, passing a few members of the night cleaning crew, who she gave a cheery wave too, Molly pressed out into the evening, relishing the moving air. Pulling her own phone from her bag, she rapidly navigated through the prompts in order to pull up the number her favorite DI._

"_Lestrade, I'm sorry to bother you." She chirped pleasantly when he answered as she looked both ways before darting across the street. _

"_Please don't tell me he solved something else that I wasn't aware of; I'm just packing up for the night." He sighed into her ear and Molly shook her head before remembering he couldn't see her. _

"_No, nothing like that. But it does have to do with Sherlock. He left his phone, and I wanted to return it so he won't come beat down my door asking to get into the lab…where he can linger and keep me from sleeping." She rambled as she stepped out of the way of moving foot traffic. "Anyway, sorry, do you happen to have an address so I can make the drop before he comes tearing after me later?"_

_Montagu wasn't really all that far away…maybe two miles- not even- as the crow flies, but it was getting dark, and Molly didn't relish stomping around London after the street lights bathed the city in an orange glow. Trotting down the road a bit, she checked the bus route on Giltspur to see if it headed up anywhere near Montagu. There was a Montagu Street behind St. Bart's, but there were no residences back there, just more buildings to the hospital and a museum or two. Squinting up at the sign, she managed to see that the Giltspur route would eventually connect her to the A40…and Montagu was up there somewhere…near Gloucester. Sighing, Molly waited patiently for one of the lumbering double-deckers to come chugging up the small rise. Sherlock better not…be his prickly self when she showed up at his door brandishing his mobile, or she would most certainly hit him._

_It was late; she was exhausted and quite frankly, she didn't like taking the city buses. The tube was more bearable, and a taxi even better, but she spent all her spare cash on crappy cappuccinos in the subpar coffee machine out in reception throughout the day. She had a handful of quarters that would get her out to his place, but that was it. Her commuter Tube pass would be her ticket home anyway, and she would definitely nag him into walking with her down to the nearest Tube entrance, because it was dark and he would owe her._

_As the large bus came to a bumbling stop in front of her, Molly hopped on and settled into a vacant bank of seats, wishing she was on her way home instead. _Supernatural_ was supposed to be on, and she had recorded it just in case she had to work late._

_The city spread out around her as the bus hit the A40 and picked up more speed and more patrons as it slithered through the light traffic. Molly let her head thunk against the glass, watching the buildings as she sped past, thinking of nothing in particular. Gloucester was something like the fifth or sixth stop, and Molly hesitated briefly as she stepped into unfamiliar territory. This neighborhood was actually pretty nice. _

_Which was good because she had to walk a couple of blocks up the road still to find Montagu…and Sherlock's flat. _

_When she did finally locate the ever elusive Montagu Street, it was off the beaten path and in a rather charming section where the residents prided themselves on tidy little window boxes bursting with flowers. Smiling at the thought of these people having a Sherlock in their midst, she wondered briefly if he seemed to enjoy living here. There was a lot of happy on this street. That was like a talisman to keeping him at bay…like garlic to a bloodsucker. She should try hanging a strand around her huge walk in freezer to keep him from nicking bits. _

_Checking her phone where she had entered the address, Molly quickly found the right door and rang the appropriate bell before settling back to wait, excited to see him despite all the effort it took to get out there- which really wasn't much, but it was getting late and she was tired. She waited for a good two minutes before pressing the button again and listened for the telltale buzz to let her know that it did ring. Maybe he wasn't home? He hadn't been fluttering about a case yesterday, but she couldn't be certain on that. He was like the weather…could change on a dime._

_Molly checked her watch, lifting her phone she debated calling Lestrade again. Except he wasn't Sherlock's keeper…officially. Deciding against it, Molly pressed the doorbell one more time, holding her finger on it._

_There was a slam inside and Molly snatched her hand back, nervous all of a sudden. When the heavy door before her swung open, she was faced with a person that was decidedly not Sherlock; shorter, grumpier, and with a beady eye trained right on her. Molly edged back before catching herself. _

"_Whot do ya wan'?" His voice was thick with cockney; Molly shifted her feet, unsure for the first time. Maybe he didn't live here?_

"_Sorry to bother you, I was looking for Sherlock Holmes. Is he in?" She asked politely, watching his face darken like a rain cloud at the mention of 'Sherlock'._

"'_Olmes?" He snapped at her. "Yeah 'e's 'ere. Upstairs stompin' 'round and makin' a righ' pest of 'imself. Th' bloody loon."_

_Molly waited for a beat before figuring maybe she needed to be more specific with this snarky old man. "I have something he left at work- his phone. I was just here to return it." She said slowly._

"_Whot's it got t' do wif' me?" _

"_Er," she blinked. "Not anything. May I go up and see him?" _

_He just growled before stepping aside and yanking the door wide enough so she could barely squeeze through. "Upstairs." He glowered as he jerked a thumb behind him, pointing to a narrow staircase._

_Offering a shy thank you, Molly wasted no time in ascending the small case to the door at the top labeled with Sherlock's flat number. Raising a hand, she rapped smartly on his door. "Sherlock?" _

_There was no answer and a haughty huff behind her alerted her to the fact that she had an audience. _

_Grasping the door handle, Molly knocked again as she turned the knob. Surprisingly, it wasn't locked, but thinking about it, such a stunt seemed very much like him to leave an invitation for more drama, after all, who would willingly rob a humanoid version of a blood hound? He would just track them down the second he found out. He'd probably be ecstatic about it too. _

_Slipping inside, Molly shut Sherlock's troll of a landlord out as she softly called his name. "Sherlock? Are you here?" Well this wasn't completely and totally awkward at all…_

_God, she hoped he wasn't naked somewhere. She had a cousin that liked the feeling of being in the buff, which roughly translated to him roaming his home stark naked all the time. Surprise visit's not recommended._

_Maybe he really wasn't home. He had a Vulcan-like sense of perception so not hearing her wasn't really a good enough excuse. "Sherlock? Are you in?" She pitched her voice, staring around the messy flat, as if hoping he'd unearth himself from one of his newspaper piles, or randomly combust into being right before her and lecture her on the proper methods of breaking and entering unlocked residences._

_The nucleus state of Sherlock's existence in this apartment was…well not that surprising. The faint scent of tobacco gave the flat a soul. Clutter was everywhere, on everything, showing a sense of life, of activity. There seemed to be an order to the madness, but she was having trouble determining what that was exactly. A large knife was buried tip deep into the mantel, pinning several pieces of mail down, and another tacking a few pictures to the wall of various plants. He had dozens of books stacked in random areas that also pulled double duty as side tables. His furniture had a well lived in look, which she could appreciate, and his walls were plastered in newspaper clippings, maps of London, and random taxidermy bugs…mostly bees, in shadow boxes. She didn't know what she had been expecting, but this apartment had 'Sherlock' scrawled all over it._

_Speaking of the devil, where was that man? "Sherlock." She said loudly, and when he didn't stick his head out of one the nooks or crannies like a ghost to heckle her for trespassing- as if! He did it all the time in her lab- she decided to just leave his phone on the coffee table, which also happened to be one of the only clutter free pieces of real-estate. Stepping forward as she dug around in her purse, Molly briefly considered leaving a note, but swiftly cast that thought aside. Let him deduce who brought him his phone. Maybe that will also teach him to lock his doors. Smiling, she turned, to leave, catching the expanse of the kitchen in one pass and promptly froze on the spot. _

_It took her a second for her brain to catch up to what her eye's had already long-established. Too long. Sherlock was conked out on the floor by the sink, shards of glass all around him. "Oh my God, Sherlock!"_

_She jumped a stack of _Guardian_ newspapers and ducked quickly around the kitchen table, trying to not kneel on the jagged glass strewn about like glitter. "Sherlock!" She repeated, reaching for him. There was something seriously wrong. Her trained eye noticed the patches of vomit, right before her nose did._

"_Shit, Sherlock!?" She hissed, pressing a shaking hand into the flesh of his too cool neck, searching, praying for a pulse. It took too long, and she had trouble keeping her ragged breathing from distracting her, but when she found the flutter of life in the veins beneath trembling fingers, she about sobbed in shear, all-consuming relief. _

"_Mmm…" She heard a faint noise from him, and she leaned over to check his face. His eyelids were cracked open, primarily shielding unseeing, bloodshot eyes that looked off into a distance she couldn't perceive. His deathly pale skin was positively translucent, unmistakably displaying the bluish gray stitch work of arteries and capillaries that she shouldn't have been able to see. _

"_I'm here, Sherlock, I've got you." She told him, hands already dialing the number for an ambulance on her phone. "I'm calling for help. Don't you dare die on me." She snapped at him as she held her breath and put a hand on his forehead, until her call connected. _

_He had overdosed. He had overdosed AGAIN. Molly snapped her phone shut after having relayed as much information as possible. Secure in the knowledge that help on its way, she shifted closer to him, gently lifting his head to so as to scoot under, uncaring of the pool of sick and glass that made up his bed, pillowing him in the folds of her skirt between her knees. "What have you done to yourself?" She asked in a thick voice, eyes blurring as she took in the sight of his proud frame all but crumpled in a tiny flat's kitchen. _

_This was so wrong. He shouldn't be like this. Stroking gently at his forehead, cheeks and chin, feeling the clamminess of his skin, she tried to think of him better. Of him solving crimes and being his normal domineering self. She willed the ambulance to go faster, and begged for seconds from a deity she didn't talk to all that often. _

_Rubbing her thumb over his white bottom lip, Molly swallowed a sob as she blinked, birthing two fat, round tears. "You tosser. What were you thinking?" She asked him again as she curled over him, dropping tears all over his cheeks. Hoping he could understand her, knowing that he couldn't. "You deserve better."_

_When help did arrive, she was struggling to keep from breaking down further as she watched them strap him in to a gas mask and down onto a gurney. In a haze, she followed the EMTs out- she did remember to lock his door- and down the narrow stairs to the large ambulance parked outside. Its jewel bright lights flashing off the houses lining the street, as well as the faces grouped up to see the action. The ride to the hospital, she couldn't actually recall…she just remembered starring at his prone form, terrified that if she didn't keep watching him, that if she looked elsewhere, he might die._

_Every so often, the medics working frantically around him would turn to ask her a question._

_And she, in the overly bright lights of the ambulance that was thundering down the highway toward the nearest hospital, realized she didn't know much about the man she considered a good friend._

_-"Is he on any kind of medication?"_

"_I don't know."_

_-"Any allergies?"_

"_I don't know."_

_-"Any next of kin? Mother, father? Siblings?"_

"_A brother, I think."_

_-"Do you have contact information for this brother?"_

"_No."_

_- "Does he have a previous drug record?"_

"_Yes. He's been in rehab for it."_

_-"When? How long ago? Do you know where?"_

"_About eight months ago he got out. Was in for four months. I don't know where."_

_-"What does he use?"_

"…_I don't know." She choked up._

_-"When's his birthday?"_

"_I don't know."_

It had been one of the longest nights of her life. She remembered that helpless feeling that consumed her as an anxious medical team leapt to work the second they wheeled him through the hospital doors, sweeping him away from her to a fate she had no control over.

Grief stricken, she had dropped down into one of the waiting room's soft chairs and buried her face into her hands. She recalled sending a short text to Lestrade, believing that he would want to know if something bad happened to Sherlock.

_Found Sherlock OD'd on the floor. He's at St. Mary's._

The call had been worse.

"_What happened?!" her phone barked at her the second she answered._

"_He was unconscious on his kitchen floor in a pool of his own vomit." She cried, sucking on her sobs so she at least sounded coherent. "I don't know how long he had been like that."_

"_I'm on my way."_

There were days, even so many years later, when she would think back to that night, and struggle to not cry. He had been so important to her by that point, and it had baffled her. Frightened her even.

She didn't know if she was his friend, but he was definitely hers. He spent so much time cooped up with her in the lab and the morgue- even though Bernard had resorted to taping a large sign that clearly stated STAY OUT SHERLOCK to the doors. He came down several times a week to do whatever it was he did. He had so many experiments, knew so many things, that Molly had trouble accepting his drug addiction. She knew him to be intelligent enough to understand the risks of such behavior. Children knew about how bad drugs where, that people were hurt and killed by playing with or using them. They dealt with dead druggies all the time in the morgue. Hell, he even had requested- stole- the heart of one to see what the effects of methamphetamine did to the muscle tissue.

So why? Why did he do them? Why? She never asked. She should have asked. And no answer that he could possibly give her would have sufficed. She would have probably nut punched him…seeing as that was kind of what he was doing to himself in a roundabout, messed up way.

She didn't want him to be like this. She didn't want him to be broken, and she didn't give two shits what he said in return, he was broken.

But why? Why?

That was just it though…she didn't know. She didn't know him!

Yet he knew all about her. He knew she liked her tea and coffee prepared the same exact way. He knew she was a dog person. He knew her favorite ice cream flavor. He knew her last three boyfriends- of exactly three weeks a piece- and that he felt they were 'dull, idiotic sacks of flesh'. He knew she enjoyed watching _Supernatural_ because she thought the Winchester brothers were gorgeous. That she liked ramen noodles and hated beets. He knew of her family, where she came from, and that her sister lived in America and worked as a translator for the U.S government. That she liked to knit, crochet, and that she could draw relatively well. Hell, he even knew when she didn't get enough sleep the night before.

He knew her.

Whereas she didn't even know his birthday…or exactly how old he even was- couldn't have been older than thirty physically. Mentally she'd stick him at a bratty eight years. She thought he might play an instrument, a viola or violin, because he had callouses on his left hand and sometimes a bruise under his chin on the left side. Her sister could play the violin, so she recognized the signs. He liked pizza, preferred Chinese, and hated Indian food. In fact, she knew what he hated more than what he liked. He despised lazy people and stupid people. That he didn't care for sentiment, as he put it. He despised the Tube with a passion, and thought James Bond to be incredibly dull- because she had been watching _Skyfall _on the small television in the lab while sharing a pizza with him and he wouldn't shut up about how fake and absurd Daniel Craigs antics were. Apparently, 'oddly compelling' was an insufficient excuse for watching a movie for two hours.

She knew he had a brother and that they had a rough time getting along.

But she didn't really know what made him tick, what made him happy- outside of serial killers. It couldn't just be the mystery, the chase. He loved knowledge, enjoyed tinkering with things…but was that enough? Did he love anyone?

Did he have friends? People he truly looked to for companionship?

She knew of only herself and Lestrade that actively sought him out. He because Sherlock liked to solve his cases and not tell, and she because…well she liked having him around.

Did Sherlock feel the same way?

_True to his word, Lestrade flew through the emergency doors not too long after their brief phone call. Unfortunately, he had Anderson and another person with him._

"_Molly!" _

_Lifting her heavy head from her hands, Molly quickly stood to greet the DI, wiping half-heartedly at her wet cheeks. "I haven't heard anything." She said in greeting. Anderson and the second person, a dark skinned woman, hung back, which she decided she preferred. She had not forgotten the way Anderson had threatened her. _

"_Tell me what happened." Lestrade, face drawn in stress, listened as she retold what had transpired, and cursed when she mentioned finding him bunked out on the floor. _

"_God, why does he do this?" Viciously rubbing at his face in agitation, Molly could see how upset he was about Sherlock. "I mean, he could have…if you had not gone over…" Lestrade was at a loss. They should get together and form a help group to handle the emotions that stupid man in the ER managed to evoke._

_Trying to surreptitiously wipe her leaking eyes, Molly tried for a calming breath. "But I did. And he is getting help."_

_Anderson snorted rudely, finally deciding to join the two in discussing their wayward friend. "Shame really. We can only hope this brain fry will bring the Freak to a tolerable-" His sentence was interrupted._

_Because Molly had _rudely_ socked _him_ in the mouth._

The days following that terrible night were…difficult. She never caught up on the sleep missed and spent several nights after work trudging to the next hospital to see how he was doing. Stomach pumped, blood in the process of being cleaned, cocaine- thanks in large part to a pissed Lestrade- gone, and one cranky invalid started to come back down to Earth.

Sherlock, in the twilight of the buzz, was absolutely unbearable. He was more vicious and cold than she was used too, prone to fly into spectacular fits that managed to offend everyone in the ICU at once. If it weren't so ridiculously embarrassing sitting next to his bed as he launched verbal assaults so full of piss and vinegar and intrusive knowledge about every poor soul within visible range, Molly would have been pleased to see that he hadn't lost something vital in his personality due to his overdose. Sometimes people irrevocably destroyed their mental faculties when they overzealously indulged in nose candy. The doctors assured her it came with the crash, Lestrade mentioned it made getting over the weird reaction to his almost dying easier- poor Lestrade was just itching to punt Sherlock Bloody Holmes into the Thames for the scare- and Molly had never dealt with so much bull shit for one person outside her own family.

It was a major question as to why she was doing this. Why she withstood a full-bore, category five Holmes Hurricane, willingly.

She understood that, even though Sherlock operated outside the realm of normal, that he 'didn't do sentiment', there was something akin to relief when either she or Lestrade stopped in to check on him- or so she had been told offhand by a nurse.

"_He's unbearable." She mentioned, unconsciously repeating what Molly thought too. "But if there is someone here, he's just shy of awful." The nurse had snipped as she huffed passed a haggard looking Molly, fresh off a twelve hour shift. "Do see that he eats his jell-o."_

Sherlock apparently hated jell-o.

Molly had to make personal, self-deprecating, sacrifices to get him to eat. Period. Like the six foot toddler he sometimes- all the time- chose to be that fourth day, Sherlock did not want to eat his pureed cuisine. He never listened to her, so she had no idea why the nurses kept asking her to make sure 'he ate his mashed carrots'.

"_Well those look revolting." He had said mildly, crossing his arms when she had lifted the lid to his tray. He had looked worn and pale, his body overtaxed to the point of not giving a shit about anything beyond making sure he breathed and blinked._

"_Truly uninspired." She couldn't help but agree. Scooping up a complimentary plastic spork with a heavily bandaged hand, she held it up to him with an unsympathetic smile. "Bon appetite, Sherlock."_

_He looked mutinous. "Not happening."_

"_You're an adult. Now shut it and eat your baby gruel like a man." She pried one of his large hands loose enough with her good hand, and all but jabbed the spork between his fisted fingers. _

"_I don't want too." He refused in petulance._

_She sighed, trying to figure out how her life had veered so badly that she ended up spoon feeding a cranky, six foot child his brightly colored mash, before tucking him into bed. "Eat it."_

"_No."_

"_Why are you being such a baby?" She burst out tiredly, wishing she had brought some Advil to sooth her aching hand. "If you eat more, you'll get better faster, and can leave sooner." _

_He scowled down at his plate. Unmoved._

"_Please." She caved and resorted to shamelessly begging. "Please just eat something. Anything."_

_He sighed in such a dramatic fashion that she thought he might spit a lung out onto the food tray. "I am not interested." He said with feeling._

_That's it. She'd had it. Snatching the spork from the limp grip his tightly balled fingers managed to produce, Molly shoveled a huge portion onto it and placed it up to his mouth. "Come on, boy. You can do it! Come on!" She encouraged him in such a high pitched voice, wickedly wielding the baby talk which attracted the whole floor's attention. Sherlock's scandalized look of attrition would keep her warm at night for weeks to come. "Come on, now. Open the hatch for the plane." She finished of her little show with obnoxious plane noises and all as she swooped the goopy carrot laden spork all around Sherlock's person. People probably thought she was bonkers. They deserved each other, she and he._

"_This is incredibly deeming, Hooper." He hissed, grabbing the flimsy eating utensil from her hands so roughly, mashed carrots splattered against the wall beside his bed. _

"_Eat your food, and I will stop. I have all night Sherlock, and a dozen and a half more such stunts stocked up from years of waiting for my sister to give me a niece or nephew." Molly said straight-faced, looking him dead in the eye. "Some even involve brightly lifting songs _and_ puppets."_

_He was disintegrating in the face of her threat, but she had one last ball to blast into his waning resistance. "Greg promised me he would help with those that need two singers and puppeteers."_

"_You're bluffing." He called her on it._

"_You wanna bet?" She said simply, unconcerned at his pitiful defense._

_Horrified, he loaded his spork and stuffed it quickly in his mouth with a grimace of pain. She made a mental note to tell Greg so as to keep this charade up. He'd do it too. He would so sing and embarrass the snot out their resident pain in the butt. Lestrade was fearless. _

_Her victory, while sweet in all possible ways, was marred by the deep resounding throb of her hand. Anderson had a hard head and she suspected she had a nasty sprain. She furtively rubbed at it as she grinned like and arse at him while he made faces eating his slivered pieces of ham. _

_Cleaning his plate was like watching a live drama. He made sure to broadcast how much he hated 'eating food.' That this had to be a form of malpractice and that he could sue. _

"_No one in their right mind would listen to a law suite of that nature, and you know it." She said, unconcerned as she turned the small TV in the corner on to _Jersey Shore_, just to torture him since he was one of those people that couldn't let something pass over him that was so 'mind-numbingly repugnant' as reality TV._

"_Now that's just plain mean." He sulked into his potato bake like a champion. _

"_I know." _

_She was starting to flag under the weight of the day, and as Sherlock finished the last dredges of his disappointing and nutritious meal, Molly was aborting yawns left and right as she propped her head up with elbow his bed using her bandaged hand to brace up against her temple. She was mindlessly watching as one of the many trampy girls threw her drink in the face of a roided orange monster when she felt a pointed bit of pressure glide gently over her thickly bound knuckles._

_Leaning over a little to look up at him, Sherlock had a blank expression on his face as he quietly observed her. _

"_What?" She asked, desperately trying to stifle a gaping yawn. _

"_Who did you hit?" He titled his head, much like a dog._

_Blinking away the haze that her brain seemed to be soaking in, Molly roused herself to answer him. "What makes you think I hit anything?"_

_His eye's narrowed at her, and she felt like breaking a sweat. "There's no use diverting from the intended question."_

_She let her hand drop and moved to sit up so she could gather her things to go. "It's late Sherlock-"_

_Long fingers attached to a large hand slipped around her wrist, barely brushing the edges of the frayed gauzy wrapping. "Molly."_

_Why was she stalling anyway? Why was she trying to keep this from him? Could she have done a poorer job to begin with? It was like dangling a bone before him with all that pathetic mystery, and since he couldn't go find something to really put that race engine of a brain to use, she would have to do._

"_It's stupid." She mumbled, watching his fingers shift around her swollen hand. _

"_No, whoever you hit must have been stupid. You're too nice to lash out so…enthusiastically."_

_She felt a laugh tickle the back of her throat. When he looked at her though, his cool eyes were flashing something, and the mirth quickly died on the back of her tongue. "Molly?"_

_She mouthed a second before clearing her voice. "An- Anderson. I hit Anderson."_

_That got his attention. "Anderson?"_

_Nodding her head, she felt shy all of a sudden. "He was being…"_

"_Idiotic." He bobbed his head in agreement. "It's his standard operation preset." _

"_He said terrible things when…after they took you…" She licked her lips nervously. "He- he was being intentionally horrible. A-and I was so upset…"_

"_Well I don't know why-" He started to say something and she rushed him._

"_Because people should never say the things he said. In situations like that." She snapped watching steel blue eyes widen fractionally. _

_In the silence that followed, Molly stooped to grab her bag to go before turning to him. "Friends look out for each other. I don't tolerate those who say otherwise about them." She then dipped her good hand into her purse and produced his blackberry, which she tossed to him. "By the way, you left this behind again."_

_He seemed oddly slow at that moment as he caught his phone, a look of bafflement written all over his face. "Where did I leave it?"_

"_First the lab. Then your flat." She yawned. "Have a good night, Sherlock."_

Something had changed that night. Whether he started acknowledging her as more than someone to mooch off of or if he continued to view her as soft-hearted enabler, Molly was positive she never wanted to know. He didn't look at things the same way others did. He didn't see things in the same colors or recognized the same lines as the rest of humanity. He made them up as he went along, moved them around, or just plain ignored them. Molly wanted to believe with everything she had that he looked at her as a friend, she didn't want to just be an associate or a 'soft-hearted enabler'.

He knew for a fact that she thought he was her friend.

That she would do whatever she could for him…she just hoped that he wouldn't pull a Sherlock and hurt her with that information. He could be unintentionally a huge wanker if he wasn't reminded that people had feelings that were easily hurt when people stomped on them.

She maybe should seriously reconsider that self-help group with Lestrade.

Sherlock had to spend almost a full blown week- seven days- in the ICU before he was able to be moved. That older brother of his, Mycroft, who Molly had met once briefly when she was coming up to visit him on his last day at St. Mary's, was having him committed to a fancy rehab facility somewhere.

_Molly pushed into the ICU where Sherlock was still housed, greeting Regan in passing, one of the many suffering nurses who were set to task caring for the great git while he was recovering. She was making her way over to his bed when she noticed that he already had a visitor. Well dressed, tall, and Sherlock looked absolutely livid._

_There could be dozens of reasons for this._

_But this interaction seemed a little different, the way Sherlock looked so mad, and the stranger even looked miffed. Then he tapped his umbrella impatiently off the floor to enunciate every word to Sherlock, who responded with a mini meltdown. _

"_WHAT?!"_

"_Calm yourself, brother." Came the frigid reply._

_Ah, family. Made sense._

_She waited politely as the near silent fight continued, but she could tell from a long way out that poor Sherlock didn't have a chance. A look of thunder hardened his face as he flumped back in his bed, his- she was betting older brother, as opposed to younger- made a final comment before gathering his possessions and walking down the ward toward where she was waiting. He met her eyes briefly and she gave him an unsure smile for his notice._

"_My apologies on his sour mood. It was rather unavoidable I'm afraid." He tipped an imaginary hat, and continued through the door before she could even manage a comment._

_Well that wasn't completely weird or anything. Molly watched him disappear around the corner to the bank of elevators, before turning back around to see the destruction left in his wake. Did she really want to fight this battle just to check on how he was doing? A peeved Sherlock was best left to his own devices unless one relished a beheading. She squinted down at him, trying to gage if he would chew on her when the choice was stripped from her hands. One minute she was watching his dark head of curls, and the next, flashing steel blue eyes were pinning her to the spot. She blinked and he arched an aristocratic brow as if to ask 'what the hell are you looking.'_

_Well….crap._

_Steeling herself for the inevitable, Molly cemented a small smile on her face before making her way down to his bed. He watched her like a hawk the entire time._

"_Well, you look cheerful." She mentioned as she set her stuff down beside the recently vacated chair._

_He looked exhausted still. Dark bags under his eyes only sharpened the pale clarity to them, giving the effect that he could look right through someone. His skin, while always on the light side, set his inky dark brown hair off in such relief that he was a rather arresting individual when he was allowed up to move around. Then he usually opened his mouth and the view had other issues to immediately contend with._

"_Fancy yourself clever, do you?" He rumbled at her, his baritone somehow deeper in his anger. _

_Little warning bells were bleating inside her head, and she knew she only had seconds before he said something mean and douchy. "Not particularly. Who was that?" She tipped her had toward the door._

"_No one of importance." He grouched. _

"_You're brother?" His grumbling and twitching was enough of a conformation for her. "Right, okay."_

_He jutted his chin as he glared at her. "Not, 'right, okay.' He's sticking his nose into my affairs again. Can't leave well enough alone." Intangible mumbling met her ears before he huffed. "Mycroft."_

_Molly could see the danger she was in, she really could. "What did he do?" She asked quietly, almost worried about setting him off. He was like a tightly wound bomb, ready to explode and take as many people as he could with him. _

_Sherlock was generous like that. _

_He clenched his teeth, the muscles in his jaw bulging with the strain as his thoughts bounced behind his cool eyes. Settling on something, he grunted between his teeth. "Rehab." _

_Oh, damn. "Where?" She breathed._

"_Kent." His teeth clicked as he snapped the word. _

_If Molly didn't know better, she'd thought he was close to crying the way he was held so rigidly. And she knew why._

"_Sherlock," She said urgently. "Pick one: Heads, shoulders, knees, or toes." _

_His lip lifted. "What are you on about?" He was confused and trying to hide it._

"_Pick one." She repeated as she dug something out of her pocket. "Quickly."_

_He looked like he wanted to ask questions, or just plain wanted to her piss off somewhere. Well too bad. "Pick one." She cut him off on whatever he was going to say._

"_Heads. Now what are you-" She was already striding away from him. "What-hey, Molly?" He called._

"_I'll be right back." She said over her shoulder as she broke out into a run the second she hit the main hallway. St. Mary's was smaller, and much younger than Bart's- by almost eight hundred years- and she couldn't dawdle if she wanted to catch him. _

_She hit the door for the stairwell and flew down them as fast as possible, not stopping even when she hit the lower lobby. Bounding across the entrance and out the doors, Molly saw the older Holmes sliding into the backseat of a nondescript black Mercedes. _

"_Mr. Holmes!" She called, all but sprinting for the vehicle. "Mr. Holmes, wait! SHERLOCK!" She yelled in desperation. When he popped his head back up, obviously looking for the oddball screaming his brother's name, Molly sagged in relief. If she had missed him, her plan would have been a bust._

_She rapidly crossed the gap to his car as he stepped back out of it to meet her. "My, apologies, sir." She wheezed, winded from her run down several flights of stairs. "I needed to speak with you really quick."_

_He cocked his head, so much like his brother did when something piqued his interest. "What can I do for you, Ms. Hooper."_

_Gulping down whatever reservations she had, Molly looked the older Holmes in the eye and started by asking. "Sherlock's going to Kent? Bexley Park?"_

_He seemed genuinely surprised. "Yes, they have a rather acclaimed center there that focus on cases like the one my brother currently finds himself neck deep in." He was watching her now with something akin to wonder. "I'm astounded he informed you."_

"_He just said two words, but I know of Bexley Park." She ducked her head. "I know that it's total isolation- removal from normal stimuli that can lead to rapid relapse of the committed." _

"_Desperate times have called for desperate measures." He said slowly, waiting to see where she was going with this. "As I said, it was rather unavoidable."_

_She knew that. Bexley Park was a last resort, at least for the affluent who could afford the care. _

"_Bexley doesn't allow for electronics- no phones, computers, or television." She said as if he wasn't already aware. "Sherlock is…" She didn't know how to finish without being offensive. So she improvised. "He's kind of techie." She finished lamely._

"_It will be rough for him, but I'm not feeling too terribly about it seeing as the scare he put everyone through was so selfishly induced by his own hand." He shifted his weight, silently signaling that her time was running out. _

_She mauled her lip for a second before sighing. "Look, I get why you're insisting on this. I do, and I'm not arguing against it, but only for one thing. Sherlock needs…something. To talk too. It can be anything really, but he seems to focus better if it's alive-ish." She winced at her word choice in front of this very polished individual that just whispered 'power' and 'money'. "If I'm busy, I've caught him chatting with Aloysius, the goldfish." My God, could she butcher this anymore? She sounded absolutely ridiculous and made Sherlock look insane to boot. "It's not a big deal or anything but, it seems to help him center his thoughts if he can express them out loud." Shut up, why couldn't she ever just shut the hell up?!_

_His focus intensified, his eye's x-raying her much like his brother's did. Molly highly suspected that he had 'the gift' too, but couldn't be sure without asking. She wished she had thought to ask his goofball brother five stories up. "Make your point, Ms. Hooper."_

"_I wanted to give him something. I was going to do it today, but if he's leaving, they won't let him take it to Bexley if it's associated with life here, as in he owned it before treatment." She rambled. "It's…legal." She rushed to finish as his face darkened in what she assumed was anger. "It's not drugs! It's nothing like that, but it's highly unusual and I won't be able to ensure it reaches him. They won't accept anything that isn't strictly from those on their list. In this case, you."_

_The older Holmes, Mycroft, her brain finally made it to the party and helpfully supplied, just stared at her. "You are the girl in St. Bartholomew's? The lab and morgue pathologist whom my brother continuously uses to supply his body part experiments with." It wasn't a question. It was a statement._

_Molly felt herself shrink. "Y-Yes, sir." Was he going to punish her? She didn't know how much leverage he had, but obviously enough to put his difficult brother into an elite, expensive program. People with money in the U.K., were people with power. "To be fair, I normally don't supply so much as he nicks them when my back is turned." If she burned, Sherlock was going with her._

_She was so screwed. _

"_I wouldn't put it past him." He sighed, and she breathed easier. _

_Swallowing, Molly forged on. "What I want to give him, it's been cleared. There are no attachments, no family, no anything to keep this from getting messy. But if I'm going to get it to Sherlock at Bexley Park, I will need your blessing."_

_Mycroft considered her for a long moment, before stepping up onto the curb. "What did you have in mind, Ms. Hooper?"_

* * *

__What do you think? I am having fun.


	2. Chapter 2

AN- Oh snip snap! This chapter is incredibly important for Molly and Sherlock for reasons that may or may not be clear as of now. Let it bother you.

Also, thank you to for the lovely reviews guys. It makes me happy that this oddball thing of mine makes you happy.

_*****Italics are in the past_

My mistakes are little tokens of affection for you. Little hugs.

**How Lucky We Are**

By: Berouge

Sherlock was gone for a season.

Four months and some fifteen days. She remembered how quiet the lab was, and had finally caved and lugged her stereo into work the first week of being by herself with no hope of reprieve. Bernard was off in the Canary Islands studying decomposing bacteria- or the local spirit bars- and Tara Smoot- the receptionist- rather didn't like her since she had allowed Sherlock to become a fixture within the morgue and lab. Lestrade had only called every so often when a person died and came through her doors for an autopsy. He hadn't heard from Sherlock either.

"_This is best. This is good. He won't survive another overdose episode, because I will personally kill him if he does." Lestrade stated as they looked over the dead, unidentified gang member's tattoos so they could find who he was in their records._

_Molly sighed. "Is it odd to say I miss him?"_

_The DI hummed as he thought about it. "No, but he'll be back, so enjoy this vacation while you can. I have a few cold cases that'll throw at him to help recalibrate his sense of purpose, but he's always a handful when he comes back."_

"_You sound so sure." She wrote something into her log as she found another ugly tattoo of a grotesquely endowed naked woman positively bursting from her top, inked into his hip. Toughness translated into tacky a lot in her line of work._

_Lestrade looked grim. "I've known him for two years, only one year longer than you. This is his third overdose that I know of."_

_She closed her eyes in pain. "Oh, God." How many had that man suffered through? Was he alone? Who helped him?_

"_It's always a relief to see him when he gets back, but shit, the worry of the next time, the next drug induced comma where we don't reach him in time always hangs onto me like a shadow. He's pushed his luck one too many times."_

He had. He really had gambled with his life and there would be a point where the selected cards wouldn't be enough to save him. It was an awful thing to focus on. Molly remembered flipping through several different scenarios where she convinced him to stop using, but the reality of who he was, what she would have to contend with if she wanted to convince him of anything, was daunting. Sherlock did what he pleased, and no matter what she said, no matter how well prepared the argument, he would make his own decisions based on whatever data seemed to present the best answer.

Still, she planned on trying to lock him into promising never to scare her like that again. They never had the chance to discuss it in the melee of the hospital. A serious conversation about drug use in a crowed ICU, where she tortured him with baby songs until he cleaned his food tray just didn't seem like an appropriate venue.

He owed her. He owed her a chance to have her say. And if she had to threaten to withhold lab access, she would. Tantrums and word games be damned, he would listen to her even if she had to sit on him.

Her righteous anger, one ignited- yet contained out of courtesy for his recovery and fellow patients, something which Lestrade firmly ignored because the poor guy had been through this once before- as Sherlock had started to notice the world around him again, had remained at a low simmer since his averse exodus to Bexley Park. Molly was female, and as the laws of nature had dictated over many millennia of the evolutionary process, she had the capability to hold onto her anger for years, stored safely away where she could unleash it at any time with the confidence that it would be just as fierce as if born thirty seconds prior.

Sherlock may be brilliant beyond reason, but he wouldn't emotionally stand a chance against a woman scorned…especially one who cared about him. Okay that probably wasn't true, but she had a few cards up her sleeve. He'd look at it as an inside job because Lestrade had agreed to back her up, but that was too damn bad.

What went around came around, buddy.

Thoughts like these helped keep the loneliness away when she was working. And as the days slowly ticked over, she felt her heart throb just a little bit more at each passing of the twenty-fourth hour. This time it was different, because she knew where he was, and that he was- theoretically- okay. She had said her goodbyes, there were no 'what if's' floating over her like a ghost of regret.

That didn't change the sobering fact that reared its ugly head every time she stepped into work.

She missed that great git.

She missed the muttering and the flurry of activity when he realized something crucial. She missed the debates during lunch- the ones where she would turn on the telly and he would condemn every single one of her choices. She hated seeing his favorite microscope without him behind it grumbling about distractions.

She missed him.

And then she would think about what Lestrade had said, how this was the third rehab, the third overdose. It begged the question if this would always be something she would have to contend with, until he either kicked the habit, or kicked it period.

It made her heart ache like a bruise. Life without Sherlock was not as fun. Life without Sherlock promised to be less special because he was special.

And she wondered why. Even Lestrade had admitted that Sherlock wasn't just another bloke in his legions of friends.

"_He's too much of a prat to ignore because he steals my stuff if I make him mad." Lestrade complained._

_Molly cocked her head as she watched Sherlock harangue one of the nurses over something. "I have determined it's because he likes you enough to want your attention."_

_Lestrade snorted rudely. "Lucky me."_

"_Yes." She said softly, watching Sherlock glower sullenly from his place tucked neatly into bed and hating every minute of it. "How lucky you are."_

They were lucky. Sherlock was difficult, yes, but he was someone that had the guts and raw talent to be something great. He was already a good person- despite what several guys on the force said, they thought he was a psychopath. She could see where they got that idea from, but Sherlock didn't quite fit the mold. He didn't care about people, or so he had claimed routinely at least once every other day, but his actions bespoke someone who was very much aware of what was important. She would peg him as more the high-functioning sociopath because he just didn't respond to the social cues like a typical person. People confused him, so he ignored a lot of what they did or said, or used the emotional triggers of others to get what he wanted. Criminals he could understand- probably because he was a shade lighter than the group he tended to hunt- but normal folk like herself didn't fit into nice little columns or patterns. He did try, though. She knew he did. He tried to reach out in his own fashion. For instance, if he said something a little too mean, he would find a way to make it up to her but cover it up to hide what he was really doing.

Like helping her move a heavy body without her asking- it sounded absurd because that's what someone should just do, but it's not standard operating procedure with Sherlock. She usually had to nag or beg. If he was a dick that day he would keep a sneaky eye on what she was doing and silently assist before making a production out of taking something. She wasn't quite sure for the reason behind camouflaging his actions, but she was almost positive that he did it as form of not-apologizing, apologizing. She had kept watch, and even provoked him into snapping at her once, just to see if her theory held water.

She wasn't a scientist for nothing.

She may be accused to being an airhead, but Molly wasn't blind. She could observe when she wanted too. However, she had already resigned herself to never asking him why he made such a simple act into something else…he might not realize he was doing it and then halt all action together. Sherlock spooked easy when it came to his nemesis, sentiment.

It was like his whole ambition in life was to be a robot. A crime solving robot. Like Inspector Gadget. Minus the Inspector because those types of people where fundamentally incompetent apparently.

She couldn't wait for him to come back. She was impatient for rehab to conclude, for him to be better, and for them to pal around again in the lab. It was too quiet without him…too dull.

She would always look back at that time in their friendship as dark. Sherlock was just too big of a personality to sweep under the carpet and forget about easily. However, Sherlock or no, work mounted as the weather kicked over into warmer temperatures, allowing the little punks and street grim to stay out later, causing more mayhem then they generally managed with snow and rain pleating the city. She was having to stay after hours to keep up with the load, cursing Bernard and his flights of fancy, and wishing there was someone there to help her roll the bodies when she needed to.

She had managed to convince one member of the cleaning crew to help her with a particular obese individual who had died from congestive heart failure alone in his house and had sat there for three weeks- that's what she figured anyway, he could have died from his lungs collapsing under all that girth, like a beached whale, but there was no scientific way to write that down without the Board having a cow. Anyway, Alan, helped roll the fat man, and then promptly quit the next day, stating 'there were things a man just shouldn't do.'

She was promptly written up for that. Figures a woman had no trouble trolling for clues in dead, slimy, tissue but a man had to make excuses. She could clean a toilet without making a huge bluster about it as well!

For two weeks straight, Molly worked well into the morning hours trying to keep on top of the jobs NSY kept mailing her way. It was getting ridiculous, and the stress of having not one, but three different precinct Detective Inspectors breathing down her neck was starting to get to her. Her senses were frayed and it had cost her dearly when it had mattered most.

"_I have another one here for you, Molly." Tara said as she wheeled a zipped up dead person through the morgue doors, loudly popping her gum. "DI Dimmock wants these results yesterday." _

_Molly groaned loudly behind her mask. "What?" She asked weakly, hands still buried deep into the stomach of another dead person Dimmock wanted results for. _

"_That's what he said." She chewed wetly, before dropping the paperwork right on the body bag before turning around and walking out the door. "I'm heading home."_

"_G'night." Molly looked dazedly around her morgue- every table was filled and the body stores were almost out of vacancy. How the heck did Dimmock expect her to get to his analysis anytime soon? Especially since she was by herself?_

_Tara used to stay and read the files to her on the new bodies, so Molly could prioritize each case by necessity. Children at the top, serial murder victims, homicides, and then suspicious deaths. Or if a case was high profile. But, noooo, Tara had to be resentful and unhelpful and just leave a body sitting in the middle of her floor, forcing her to stop her autopsy to find a place to store the stupid corpse till she was ready to work on it. Stripping gore slicked gloves off her arms, yanking her mask up off her mouth, and all but ripping her laminated apron from around her neck, Molly dumped the gloves into a red bio-hazard bag for disposal and hung her apron up on a peg so she could come back for it. _

_Grabbing the body cart with its fresh cargo, Molly pushed it over to the bank of body stores, hoping that one of the free spaces was waist level or lower. Judging by the bag, it was a big person- a man no doubt- and there was no way she could lift him by herself. _

_Her luck sucked. _

_The only open store was chest height, and the body wasn't on a jack cart so she couldn't raise the thing up and roll the body onto the sleeper. Cussing like a sailor, Molly wheeled the cart over to her large walk in cooler that still had a KEEP OUT SHERLOCK sign plastered to the front. _

_Biting her lip, Molly hesitated as she went to grasp the door. It was against regulations to store a body in the walk in. Everything in there was documented, and stored properly to keep from polluting already examined specimens. Sherlock had probably upset that delicate balance, but nobody needed to be made aware because it only mattered on paper. Cross contamination was unlikely being that- she checked the file quickly- Boris Little was still wrapped up like a present. Unzipping the bag, she took in the corpse's condition, checking the color to see how decomposed he appeared to be. A little off hue, but nothing critical at this point. He must have been relatively fresh. The chicken scratch on the file said he was found dead behind a dumpster…so it was unlikely he would wake up in an enter-only cooler. _

_She wished Sherlock was there. He would have helped move the damn stiff onto the higher sleeper. He would have also stolen some things as a form of payment but she really wouldn't have cared at this point. She'd have given him the damn body if that meant one less thing for her to do._

_Her sense of obligation and a long learned respect for regulation- bodies were different then a random organ, it wasn't the same!- Molly grabbed the phone on the wall by the cooler and hit the proper extension for Donny Mathews up in Executive. Hoping he was still around this late because she wasn't about to allow them to roast her hide over something she had no control- like how tall she grew or what sort of weight she could through around comfortably. _

"_Donny?" She said in relief. "I was worried I'd missed you. It's Molly in the morgue. I have a little issue down here." She explained her predicament, asked if anyone could help her, or if she could for one night leave a body in the large walk in. Leaning into the wall with her forehead, she closed her eyes in exhaustion. "I can't lift him. He's too big for just me. Would it be alright?"_

"_That's fine for tonight, Molly. I'll make a note of it just in case." Donny was always willing to work within reason. "Finish up and go home. You sound beat."_

_Smilingly faintly, even though he couldn't see it, she hummed. "I will. Have a good night." Hanging the phone back on its jack, she braced her forearm against the wall and leaned harder into it. She really was dog tired. She'd been hunched over person after person since walking through the double gray doors thirteen hours ago._

_Groaning loudly to herself in the near silent morgue, she pushed back from the wall and stretched. She was going to push her half-finished autopsy into the special store for active cases and head home. Her feet were killing her, but first she needed to get her newest resident into his temporary hold._

_Turning around, she only had a second to see a large fist careening toward her before it hit and sent her tumbling into the giant, stainless steel tub sink, the thick lip of the sink catching her right under the lower ribs, crushing the air form her lungs. Stunned and in pain, Molly barely had a second to gag before her head was savagely wrenched back by her ponytail. Hands madly scrabbling out in front, her fingers brushed one of the large pans used to collect organs during autopsies. Grabbing for it, she ignored the blackish purple large intestine sitting in a gooey puddle, and swung the pan up behind her ear, connecting with her attacker who bellowed as the sharp edge of the pan collided with his soft, unprotected flesh. The intestine slapped wetly against her face as it passed. _

_Suddenly free, Molly broke for the double doors that lead out to her lab. The exit was on the other side of the expansive morgue, and she instinctively knew she'd never make it if she tried. Except she never made it to the lab, either. _

"_Little bitch!" _

_It was her only warning before she was smashed bodily up against the windows, head bouncing painfully off the glass, cracking it. _

"_Let go!" She screeched, wiggling desperately. "Let me go!" She kicked out behind her in a frantic bid to free herself. The faint reflection in the splintered glass identified a decidedly not dead Boris Little as his face twisted hungrily behind her before he darted in again to seize her. _

_He grunted as her heel met the sensitive nerve located on his inner thigh, and he responded by slamming her so hard against the glass, it shattered, spilling her over the jagged edge onto the lab floor in a heap. Coughing and disorientated, Molly started to drag herself, trying to get away. Panic made her ignore the sharp bite of glass in her arms and thighs. She had to get away- no one else was around to help. Tara had gone home and it was near midnight so the building was as empty as could be. Donny may still be around but he was seven stories up and would never hear her screams._

_Grabbing at the handle of a drawer, she pulled herself up to her knees just a crunch behind her alerted her to how much danger she was in. A rough hand snatched up her calf, twisting hard, he yanked her backwards._

_Squealing in terror, she reflexively tightened her grip, jerking the large drawer opened so fast with her momentum, it flew off its tracks and dismounted from the wall altogether, clanking and banging off the floor in a terrible racket._

_Sealed bottles bounced out all over the place and one of them she recognized almost instantaneously. Concentrated sulfuric acid- the same glass jar Sherlock had once tossed around just to mess with her nerves. _

_Horror fumbled her fingers as she wildly clawed at the bottle, holding on tight. Boris pulled her down the length of the lab floor by her ankle, shredding her back in the glass, destroying her leggings and the hindmost parts of her thighs. Lurching forward with a strength she could never match, Boris flung her into the subway tiled wall, where her neck, head, and body crumpled like an accordion._

"_One last girl. One last little bitch. Just one more." Boris chanted. His eyes a sickening yellow as he locked on her watery brown ones. "Just one more tender flesh. Just one."_

_He was crazy. Molly whimpered as he sank his huge hands roughly into __her__ hips and dragged her underneath him. Filthy fingers ripping her autopsy cover-all, her skirt, and then tugging at her leggings, while rancid, sour breath filled her nostrils._

_Her mind was sluggish from the abuse. So scared, and so battered, Molly felt her world tilt with the realization of what he was about to do to her when icy fingers met the warmth of her inner thigh._

_Adrenalin was a wonderful thing. _

_The pint sized jar in her hand smashed soundly across his face in such a satisfying spray of liquid and glass. The sharp edges of the lower part of the jar sank in and held while Boris screamed in agony as the acid concentrate instantly went to work eating at the flesh of his eyes, nose, and mouth. _

_Molly watched in a stupor as he stumbled to his feet, throwing his large body around as he struggled to flee the pain. Like a vast ogre, he slammed into counters, carts of tools and beakers, several stools and a microscope or two before barging like a bull through the double doors out to reception; his echoing cries bouncing off the tiled walls and floor, until all noise faded and she was left once again in a quiet lab. _

_Her breathing was labored, and her head felt like dead weight as she slowly looked at the carnage of her precious laboratory. Long, bright red blood streaks, splatters, and pools made it look like a nightmare straight out of Hollywood; it wasn't special effects however- it was real. That was her blood. _

_What was she going to do? She needed to staunch the blood flow. She needed to get to a phone…she needed to clean up the mess. Donny was going to be really mad that she didn't get that body put away, and she didn't want to know what he was going to say when he saw the lab. _

_She needed to think. Her head was killing her, and she needed to think. Slowly she let her skull come to rest on the floor, staring up into overly bright lights. Maybe a few minutes of rest would help her get her mind back on track. It was quiet enough to think, but she needed to concentrate._

_She just needed a few minutes to think…_

Sherlock had been angry.

He had been so angry he couldn't even talk to her when she had come around and was able to remember to ask people what was going on.

When she had awoken in a bed somewhere in London General- she was later told because she had no idea where the hell she was- she couldn't really recall what had brought her there- an ambulance is not what she meant. She could only attest to everything being murky and that it hurt to breathe, blink, and think.

Oh, and that Sherlock had been there, rigidly looking down at her with such a look of _hate_.

"_S'Lck." She had grunted as she tried lifting her head, squeezing her eyes closed because it hurt to grunt. It hurt to move._

_His piercing gaze had narrowed. He said something but she couldn't understand, and he just looked even more furious than before as his steel blue eyes flashed his revulsion. _

_She didn't understand. She couldn't think. So she lowered her head down to rest and closed her eyes._

Molly was no stranger to fights…she just sucked at them. Girls back on the playground were as vicious then as they could be now, and she had been in her fair share of altercations before the notion that fighting was a brutish, boy thing and that ladies didn't partake in fist fights, put a swift stop to them. Little girls traded in their boxing gloves for mental land mines and mortar shells that, when brandished properly, could do more damage to a girl's self-esteem than any black eye could ever hope to accomplish. Still, a fat lip and a swollen eye didn't hurt like the dickens any less. Especially when made by a big man in a lonely cage of a lab where her only defense had been to try and run.

A lot of good that had done for her.

It was only made worse by how awful she looked, and how shocked people's expressions were when they first set eyes on her those days following waking up to Sherlock's sunny disposition of spite.

Lestrade had been horrified. Even to this day, he would get upset if the lab attack was brought up around drinks.

_She groaned weakly into her pillow, the vibrations of her throat somehow soothing to her despite serving no other purpose what so ever. She was in pain. Pain. PAIN. She groaned again on principle._

"_Molly?" A voice cracked near her and she split a caked eye slowly open to see who was with her. Lestrade's handsome face was drawn in strain, he looked awful. "Hey." He said softly to her, brushing his knuckles gently against her swollen cheek._

_She made a noise of acknowledgement but didn't move her face from being buried half in her pillow. _

"_I just wanted to see how you were doing." He mentioned, agitatedly rubbing at his mouth and chin._

_Molly grunted a 'so-so' kind of noise before closing her eyes, exhausted beyond comprehension._

"_Get some rest, Molly." His voice saw her off into the void._

It had taken Molly nearly three days to finally achieve enough coherence to mumble a few bits of conversation out to her nurses. Mostly to let them know if she were in pain and to thank them for covering her up when she started to shiver. Funny, no blankets ever came off, they just kept piling up. Her family had been sporadic in her memory. She knew at some point her mother had been there to hold her hand and that apparently her sister was fluttering around, having teleported from America, but for the life of her she couldn't pin down where.

It had been a short tempered Sherlock that had filled in the some of the gaps.

_It took her a lot longer than it should have to realize he was in the room. She could almost feel happiness being sucked into a black hole right where she saw a crossed leg with a highly polished leather shoe attached in her field of vision. "You're home." She had croaked into the stillness of the room._

"_Well spotted." He grumped. She couldn't see his face, it still hurt to move her neck and she didn't want to lift her head from her pillow support. She was on her side, facing the window and him yet she couldn't see him. She was curled and if she tried to move, her breathing suffered._

"_Stop that." That low baritone cut like a whip through the still air._

"_How long?" Her voice scratched weakly._

"_You've been here almost five days." _

_She moaned in frustration. "N-no." Clearing her throat again. "How long have you been back?"_

_A scoff. "Six days, but that's hardly relevant." _

"_It is to me." She said brokenly, quietly._

"_Don't waste your time." _

_He was being mean. "Be nice." _

_Silence met her rejoinder, and Molly tried shifting to ease the pressure on her hip, and a spasm of agony rippled through her torso, singing along cuts that felt like they split opened and reclosed in her shifting positions. She stilled but that discomfort remained. _

"_Stop moving." He growled low. And she felt tears prick her eyes._

"_Where am I?" She said finally, desperate to move along._

"_London General's Intensive Care. You were rather badly beaten." He supplied smoothly, like a monotone droid. "Fractured skull, concussed. Cracked ribs, one broken. A sprained ankle. Multiple lacerations and contusions. And a few severe acid burns on your right hand and stomach." _

_That triggered memories…blurry and brutal. "Bor-Boris Little?" Her voice squeaked on that last name. What the hell was wrong with her?_

_When he spoke, it was like a cube of ice had slipped down her spine. "Taken. Care. Of."_

"_Lestrade was quick." She slurred, uncaring if it made sense. "You help?"_

_He didn't answer. Not even to grunt or scoff. _

_She swallowed, and swallowed again, trying to snuff out the whine building like a wave in the back of her throat. She was fine- relatively speaking, she was alive at least- she would be alright given a few good days of rest, some medicine and she would be okay. Boris hadn't done anything…she didn't think. _

_She couldn't remember, and that's what was alarming. _

_Had he come back? _

_She started to hyperventilate as her thoughts ticked over darker and darker possibilities. She whimpered._

"_Molly?" Sherlock's voice arrested her attention, much like everything with him tended to do. When he leaned into her field of vision, his steel blue eyes seemed oddly intent. "Breathe, Molly."_

_That odd keening kept creeping up her throat. She couldn't stop it. She couldn't breathe. _

"_Molly." He snapped, and she refocused on his face. Pale eyes held her dark ones without trouble. "You need to breathe." He said slowly, enunciating every syllable as if she were deaf._

_She was desperate to ask. "Di-did he do an-anything?" _

"_No." His voice followed right over her question, practically cutting it off. He seemed to know- he always knew, always understood, bless him- what she was asking without her having to give more away. "No, Molly, he was apprehended outside the building." The harsh lines around his eyes softened just a touch as he watched her._

_That noise, though, that whimper, she couldn't manage to back it down. Even at his words- one's she was inexplicably relieved to hear- couldn't keep that rolling cry at bay. "Sherlock." Her voice thick with tears she hadn't yet shed. "I n-need," Her voice hitched, and he leaned in a little closer. "I'm in p-pain. I ne-ed a nurse."_

_He had fetched one for her- more like bellowed out the door like the considerate ass he was- and it was only seconds later, after the nurse dosed her IV drip with morphine, that she felt herself calming down. As the fingers of sleep started to cover the corners of her eyes, she looked to him, her friend, who she wished she could have greeted under better circumstances and sighed softly before mumbling into her pillow. "I really missed you, you know…"_

It had been the only thing she could think about to get out of having to discuss her trauma with him. Let it be recorded that it was the very first time in her life of knowing Sherlock Holmes that she didn't want to talk to him- she'd probably live to regret it too, because getting him to talk about anything sometimes required pulling figurative teeth. She was so mixed up, so confused from what had happened down in the lab.

Who the hell was Boris Little? Nobody would tell her anything outside of repeating what she already knew. Lestrade got all grouchy and all kinds of Sherlockian cagey when she had asked- which made her so mad. He attacked her! She wanted answers! Sherlock would mysteriously develop a hearing problem when she asked him- once, his face hardened into something unfamiliar and ugly as she had inquired pointedly about Little's reason for savagely attacking her, and she had wisely backed off. Sherlock could Jekyll and Hyde his personality with the best of them.

Her research had proven fruitless when both Google and Bing hadn't returned anything substantial- only a social networking page to a site she had never heard of, and the highly embarrassing discovery of seeing her freshman year school photo on the _Daily Telegraph _and city newspapers- her assault had made headlines- and as she continued to read what had happened, it became apparent that the media knew even less than she did-but they sure had a whole lot more to say about it. For instance, Little had shown up in her morgue in a body bag, not in a dark sedan. Also, he wasn't a 'victim' with a melted face; he was a 'criminal slash dependable rapist' with a melted face. It said he was in custody currently. She eventually had to stop reading as it was rather discomforting to see herself plastered all over with no memory or consent to it. Plus, a few papers were calling her defense with the concentrated acid, almost cruel, which really upset her. _He_ attacked _her_. Not the other way around. He had shown up on her doorstep with nefarious intentions. It wasn't like she was out stalking the streets with a pint jar of acid to chuck in a person's face for shits and giggles. It could have been random, Boris snorting too much coke and the EMT team erroneously thought he was dead. That he was just a nutter mistakenly identified as expired- she wanted those medics strung up by their thumbs if that was the case because if a heart is beating, the person is alive and consequently, has a pulse- and delivered to her morgue. It wasn't unheard of people waking up in morgues very much alive. It had never happened to her, but she did have the occasional post mortem twitch. Where an arm would flop off the table or a leg move.

It had never scared her like it did a lot of her classmates. She had thought it fascinating.

She would have to rethink everything about the morgue, now. Especially the 'alone' part of the job. At least for a little while.

She had to stay in the hospital for over a week- it had taken some ten days to not feel like her head was filled with cotton instead of brains. Her leg hurt, but it wasn't as damaged as her ribs…or the skin on her face, hips and everything on the back side of her- from her head down to her heals nothing but cuts and stitches from the meat grinder that was the glass wall and floor. She bruised like a soft pear too, so her face was a hideous blackish purple, with a little green and yellow thrown in to make matters worse. Her stomach was a patchwork of multicolored artistry and her hands….her poor hands. Her right hand was…disfigured.

Okay that was a little dramatic, but the skin on her finger pads was gone. G-O-N-E, gone. The acid had consumed everything down into the deep dermis. It grossed her out more than she really wanted to admit. And it stung like crazy.

_Her distress distressed him. "They'll heal. They won't even scar because the skin on the fingers sheds too quickly for scars to be permanent." Sherlock rushed, looking constipated as he faced the tidal wave of her vain hysterics. _

"_But they are all…meat. I have no skin!" She stated as she wiggled them, unwrapped and in the process of being creamed and re-wrapped, they looked like uncooked sausages. "This is a nightmare!"_

"_They'll scab over soon enough and quit oozing."_

"_NOT HELPING!"_

His 'trying'- half assed attempt, really, and everyone including him knew it- to be consoling and understanding was giving her a complex. Luckily, the pain relievers they had given her for the road kept her blissfully from focusing too hard on her healing body. Like the sobering fact that she had trouble brushing her teeth, opening doors, or going to the bathroom by herself.

Another lucky, not lucky, aspect of her being doped out was that Sherlock wasn't really around to witness it. Yeah, he had wandered into her recovery room a time or two, a goofy unimpressed look his face as if he wasn't quite sure how he ended up there but planned to make the most out of a situation by poking his over curious nose into every store cabinet available and hacking onto the hospital's record archive via the rolling computer they used to log patient progress.

"_Sherlock!" She hissed over her shoulder, having just realized what that pecking sound was. "That's not for public use!"_

"_Well how in the devil's name do they expect to keep their records private with a key lock such as 'password'? We should probably have you moved; the lunatics are running the asylum here." He muttered with his head propped in his hand as he looked up the Prime Minister's personal health records. "Ah, herpes…now there's a gift that keeps on giving."_

Mostly he stayed away as she became more and more coherent. Her mother had mentioned seeing him a lot more often when Molly had been unconscious. Made sense, he didn't have to small talk with her.

Git.

_She was busily looking at her pitiful fingers, worrying at how right the theory of 'shedding scars' was going to be._

"_That man that helped you dear, the tall one with the pale eyes? What was his name? Sheamus?" Her mother dotted on her as she set a tea tray down on the bedside table._

"_Sherlock." Molly absently corrected, slumped deep into her pillow as she flipped her hand over to see the back of her knuckles. She had needed stitches to fix a rather large cut. Would that scar if she used Mederma frequently?_

_Her mother was setting a strainer on the rim of one of the teacups. "Yes, Sherlock, a rather peculiar name."_

"_It suits him." Maybe she should buy a small truck load of anti-scar cream. Her arms and back would need some love too. But how would she apply it to her back?_

_A slight hum met her ears along the gentle trickle of pouring tea. "How long have you known him?"_

_Molly squinted at the grotesque coloring of her under arms. Good lord, it's a miracle she hadn't sloughed her skin right off! Damn that Little sonofa- "Almost two years. He works with me in the lab a lot."_

"_So he's a scientist?" Her mother probed as she added a splash of milk to one cup._

"_He easily could be, but he prefers to solve crime cases instead." She itched gingerly at her side, holding her breath because moving was cumbersome and hurt. She couldn't remember what if felt like to not be constantly uncomfortable. And not itchy._

"_Crimes? Like a cop? A private detective?" Her mother sounded befuddled by this notion. _

"_Consulting detective, actually." Molly wheezed as she tried to roll over onto her side. It felt like pins and needles were pricking her back when she laid on it. Her mother quickly offered a hand to get her settled. "He invented the job."_

"_So he's rather intelligent, I gather."_

"_He's brilliant." Molly sighed, finding a position that didn't bother any of her billions of injuries. "Probably the smartest person I've ever met."_

_Her mother bit her lip as she watched her. "Is he…you know." She didn't finish but instead used an index finger to twirl around her ear._

_Molly frowned. "He's not crazy if that's what you're asking. He's just pushy and blunt. I imagine, since he's so gifted intellectually, that normal folk annoy him to a certain degree. Like they can't keep up, so he loses his patience."_

_She added a spoonful of vanilla sugar and stirred, contemplating something before handing off the cup to her daughter. "He is…not traditionally handsome, but tall and dark. Compelling, oddly so."_

_Molly took a sip and melted. "This is good." She gestured to her tea. _

"_Do you like him?" She asked, watching as Molly slosh tea down her front._

"_Crud!" She grabbed at the proffered napkin and dabbed onto the warm wet spots. "Uh, yeah I do. He's kinda hard to not like after a while. Must be his utter lack of manners." She muttered the last part under her breath._

"_He is good to you?"_

_Molly set her cup on her night stand, and snatched another few napkins with her good hand, stuffing them carefully down her side to help soak up the spill. "In his own way. He usually will help with work when I can't manage the physical stuff myself. He's weirdly strong."_

"_But is he kind with you?" _

_What? Molly looked at her mother, feeling like she missed a rather important clue in this conversation. "What are you asking?"_

"_Is he kind?" Her mother watched her steadily._

"_He's..." Kind? The entire English lexicon at her disposal and her mother landed on kind to describe Sherlock Bloody Holmes? "He's a good person fundamentally." She settled. _

"_Yes, I thought so too. And patient." Her mother nodded before taking a sip._

_What?_

Actually, it was probably for the best. Sherlock demanded a certain level of attention and a heavy dose of physical awareness- he could wear the hell out of a person just by his energy level alone. It was like a constant sugar high with him, which was a laughable comparison because he hated sweets…except for those 'Whatchamacallit' American candy bars. Those were sublime in candy manufacturing, or so she had been informed when she had dared to pick a KitKat out of one of the vending machines back at work.

He was ridiculous sometimes- always.

Her tenth day in the hospital was a glorious one in that she could leave- her skull fracture was minimal, but they had wanted to observe her in case of blood clots, stokes and seizures because of it. Her leg was tender, but would hold her weight no problem. Her minor cuts had scabbed nicely over- were itchy as hell- and her larger ones were coming along very well- itchy as hell. Her ribs were going to be a lost cause for several more weeks, so no lifting anything- they didn't itch but good lord did they ache when she breathed. Her bruising was still ugly, having moved primarily onto the gross mottled yellows and greens. She also had a gash on her cheek that added to the 'freshly risen dead' thing she had going on.

Man, she was a mess.

Her mother had insisted that she come stay at home, instead of heading back to Molly's flat by herself.

So for almost two weeks, Molly hid out at her mum's, focusing on nothing more constructive than taking gentle showers and eating ice cream while watching bad movies. Her fingers were healing a lot slower than she had wanted, and the acid burns on her stomach managed to almost become infected, thus they stung and oozed way too much for her nerves. Opening simple bottles of water were also a challenge she had not foreseen and a slap in the face from reality at how helpless she was in regards to easy activity. When Donny Mathews had put in a call sometime into her third week of absence from work, she had about sobbed at the chance to go back to life pre-attack.

He had phoned to see how she was, and when she wanted to return to work. She remembered the asinine suggestion of three months into the future. She had been thinking possibly day after tomorrow.

"_Wednesday might need to wait, Molly." She heard him shuffle papers. "Bernard has a few seminars that day and there won't be another person down in the lab."_

_So? "So?" She had been alone all the time before Little. It's why she got herself a fish…and a Sherlock._

"_We would feel better if someone was with you." He said delicately and she couldn't help but bristle. _

"_Oh, no worries." She informed him, mind already skipping around the problem. "I won't be alone."_

_She was bringing Sherlock. _

_Donny had trouble accepting that she wanted Sherlock with her, judging by the odd sucking sound of someone trying to swallow something a little too large and distasteful. _

"_I work with him all the time. He's better than any assistant so don't chuck an intern at me!" She said in one breath. Sherlock wouldn't tolerate having a newbie fluttering around his precious microscope._

_Donny groaned. "Molly, he doesn't even work here."_

"_Shame really," She mentioned lightly, curling her left hand hard around her phone. "He really is brilliant beyond comparison."_

"_I can't condone it." He settled on._

_And she blinked. "I wasn't asking you too. I was informing you that I had made other arrangements." Narrowing her eyes, she went for the kill. "I know Sherlock, I feel safe with him nearby. Nothing suspicious gets by him."_

Bam, he was hers in less than fourteen words.

With great emotional power, came great things to squeeze from the Board. Sherlock was officially off limits to management and anyone else who wanted him banned, and she patted herself on the back. Granted this was only ceremonial, since keeping Sherlock out had proven difficult and that mere rent-a-cops did not have the gumption to go toe to toe with the intellectual heavy weight that also happened to enjoy chewing on the stupid when they made themselves known to him.

Bernard was going to have an aneurism when he found out.

Too damn bad for all of them. Sherlock was safe- Lestrade had wanted her checked for mental damage after she told him that- he was almost a comfort to have around because he was a sense of normal, even if nothing else about him could admit to that.

She had to keep that from him though. If he found out she was calling him to help her sentimentally, he'd probably tell her 'no' just to make a point. The _arse_.

She had to be nonchalant.

_He answered on the second ring. _

"_What are you doing tomorrow?" She grimaced at the movie she was watching- _Breaking Dawn_ was god awful and almost too painful to watch. Even for her._

"_Couldn't tell you." He sounded odd. "And why are you calling? I prefer text. Text me." He promptly hung up and Molly stared in exasperation down at her phone. _

'_Go to the lab with me?'- MH_

'_I'm busy.'-SH_

_No he wasn't. He always had time to mooch off her lab and chemicals. ALWAYS._

'_The Board won't let me back unless I have another person with me.'- MH_

'_Not my problem.'- SH_

_She glowered at his answer. Oh, buddy, it so was._

'_They'll force a first year intern on me to train up.'- MH_

'_So?'-SH_

'_Think of it like having an Anderson around that won't scare easily, will ask continuous stupid questions, and will touch everything you're working on. Will also be around for months.'-MH_

_She set her phone down, not expecting a reply because somewhere in the city, Sherlock was spinning himself into a knot of incensed dramatics._

Or that's what Lestrade barked at her when he called not more than five minutes later. Apparently, dropping a bomb such as forced social interaction with new people on Sherlock in the throes of crime scene induced bliss was a lot like chucking a lit match into a vat of petrol.

Oops.

Well at least they were all disappointed now.

Her mother had wanted her to stay the night, but Molly insisted that she needed to go home and get things in order for returning to work. She was pretty much better- aside from her still broken ribs, head fracture barely mended, her fingers, and few wounds here and there.

No time like the present to dive back into her life head first. Plus, she was starting to get antsy not doing anything more constructive than watching atrociously bad movies, eating comfort foods- the glorious calorie consumption needed to stop- and whatever little project she had done to pass the day. She wasn't used to the down time, and the longer she stayed away from the grind, the more sloth she felt taking over her soul.

At her mother's, she had nothing to occupy her time- mentally. I was just her for most of the day while her mum was out doing whatever it was she did. Molly had never really cultivated a huge mass of friends- medical school kind of nixed any possibilities of having strong friendships outside of the professional ones. There was no time to fit in a three hour showing of_ Avatar_ when tests were looming or chapters had to be rapidly consumed and digested. She missed chatting with the familiar faces she had seen all the time back at work.

Plus, sans the recent phone call with both of them, Molly hadn't really talked to either Lestrade or Sherlock in weeks. It was different when she was at work, she had things that needed her focus and honestly the thought of conversing with people after a day of dealing with grieving families, discussing and consoling them about their dead loved ones, she really didn't feel the need to emotionally reach out to other people. Lestrade was easy, self-sustaining and only asked what was needed to help get a crime solved. Their friendship had spawned from dealing with managing Sherlock, and quite possibly wouldn't have existed without the great git.

Sherlock was an aberration that totally came out of left field, but his staying power had translated- for her at least- into friendship. He always gagged like a little girl when she used the 'f' word on him, but she had a feeling it was for show mostly. He liked, she believed, having someone around who was mostly pleased to see him. She could talk at him- because conversing was a 'no no'- and she could lean on his genius to correct her work when she was unsure of a result that didn't conclusively make sense- feminism's rules about a woman not looking to a man for answers be damned, he was like a teacher with the cheat sheet, plus he was easily the smartest person in the country. She'd be a massive fool not to take advantage. She saw him enough that she was comfortable in his presence to truly be herself- he didn't judge her any more harshly than he did to everyone else, which sounded terrible, but really wasn't because if she were anywhere remotely close to an Anderson, he would never have stuck around longer than the ten seconds used to make her cry. She could leave off make-up and let her hair down- he never noticed anyway- and she could put her feet on her desk when she was eating lunch, she could watch a simple show- that he bitched at, but mostly on principal of reminding her that he was smart and opinionated. He came and visited her in the hospital- she wanted to really believe it was because of her and not to do with the Little case, or the opportunity to snoop into the London General's files on his brother. She had missed him when he was in rehab- something she had not been able to ask him about.

She had wanted to hug him the last time she saw him because she was finally 'with it' enough to realize he was back, and that he had been sorely missed. He'd probably seize up and explode, which would be worth it- soooo worth it. To hug him hard and pray he would take care of himself better, so she could smile at him more often. Despite all his aspergerish quirks and sociopathic tendencies, Sherlock was remarkably tolerant of touch, and she was going to hug him the second she had the opportunity. And Lestrade too, but he would be more inclined to hug her back instead of acting like she was sucking his spirit out through his shirt.

When Molly had finally gone home that night, back to her quiet little flat, she had felt the world shift just a bit more. Things were different, and it wasn't because her milk had spoiled in the refrigerator, or that her plants had mostly wilted and died from lack of care. Post Little wasn't going to be as easy as she had hoped, because she had to sleep with the lights on and a radio softly playing.

Even to this very day, if she had a nightmare involving that night at the lab, she slept with a nightlight and the gentle white noise of music.

_Morning broke a little too early for Molly, seeing as she had been off any normal routine of rousing early for weeks. Rubbing at her eyes- gently, her cheek from where Boris had planted his fist still had a tendency to flare up if she rubbed her eyes too hard- she had showered and gotten dressed in a groggy fog. Since she had no milk for fixing her tea, and quite frankly, breakfast felt unmanageable, she shuffled tiredly out the door._

_The Tube was just starting to pick up volume as the morning rush started the mass migration to work. Slumped in a bench near the door, Molly wondered at how many of these people were actually happy to be going back to work. She had been until her alarm went off that morning, but she actually loved her job. Did these people?_

_Stepping out of the Long Lane Tube entrance into the cold air of the humming city, Molly felt another part of her slip back into place. This was normal. St. Bartholomew's complex was just in front of her, like it had been from day one and she picked up her pace. All was well until she rounded the corner to her building that held her lab, and then the trepidation at returning was back, full blast, nearly knocking her back a step at how much she didn't want to cage herself into that 'one way exit' laboratory._

_Shoot, maybe she should have waited for Bernard…or tried harder to get Sherlock to come down. _

_Had they fixed the window? The lab? What about all the broken equipment? Suddenly unsure, Molly slipped closer to the wall and hesitated in its shadow. _

_This was so stupid. It was just a building, just a series of rooms and doors. It was a person that had hurt her, so why was she so averse to going back into where it had happened? Okay that was kind of a dumb question, but it still held some merit._

_Shivering in the morning chill, Molly sucked in a deep breath and all but charged toward the front doors. _

_Tara wasn't in yet- the time was fifteen minutes till eight, and Tara never did like being early- so the hallway down to her morgue was as uninviting as could possibly be. The power saver lights were on dim, and the shadows- which had never bothered her before- made it look like a cave. _

_There were also dead people down there._

_Spooked- because her mind just HAD to add the dead bodies part- Molly scuttled over the wall where an impressive bank of light switches controlled the lobby, she flipped all of them at once, and watched in frozen fascination as the rest of the lights flickered to life. Even the small offshoot that led directly into the morgue burst to life, and Molly sagged._

_It was really quiet in the morning, and she hated it._

_Her footfalls off the terrazzo floor all the way to her lab was the only sound- so she fairly stomped her feet to make more of a racket, and immediately regretted it when her ribs filed a protest. Her lab was mostly dark, save for a few lights that hung under the cabinets that were always on and…the fish tank?_

_She squinted through the small window in one of the double gray doors. Did no one think to turn it off the night before?_

_Stepping back, Molly had to psych herself up a bit before pushing through into the heart of her world. This weird hesitancy where her work place environment was concerned had to change. There was no way she would survive employed there if she shook like one of those drop-kick dogs every time she came to work. _

_Her lab was as it had always been. Her hand shot out and hit the spare lights that turned the morgue fully on, and looking through the- thank god almighty- fixed windows; she could see that all seemed unchanged in there. The STAY OUT SHERLOCK sign on the walk-in was still there, as was her plastic apron- which looked like some had cleaned it for her._

_Turning her head back to her lab, she moved to a small set of switches a little further in to turn the lights on when she finally noticed what was off about the room._

_The fish tank was glowing._

_Blinking hard, Molly hesitated, fingers hovering over the light switch as she really took in what her eyes were seeing._

_Aloysius, her fat, boob-eyed telescope goldfish- so big from years of careful care- was radiant like a freshly snapped glow stick. His wiggling swim pattern, that was more of an uncontrolled twirling through the water, made it easy to see him._

_She dropped her bag and keys on the nearby counter and walked right up to the large forty-gallon tank that her sister had mailed her as a Christmas present some three years prior- because finding one in London at an affordable, student friendly rate was almost impossible- Molly watched in fascination as Aloysius swam drunkenly up to the tank window right in front of her, his orange body glowing a ghostly, pale green._

"_What in the world." She whispered, taking in how the rocks and live plants even had a luminescent quality to them. _

_It was so unusual, so strikingly alien. _

_Flipping the lid on the hood, Molly dipped her good hand into the cool water, Aloysius immediately jiggled his way over, his giant eye-orbs bouncing from his movements, to bump along her hand faintly, as she drug a finger along one of the corner crevices. Pulling her hand out, she looked at how the algae on her the tip of her finger and nail gave off a faint light. _

_Bio-luminescent algae...or in this case, fungus._

_Sherlock._

She had to give it to him.

That man was simply masterful when it came to finding answers and solving problems. Oh, she knew he had probably wanted to test what sort of result would be had if something ate his fungus crop, and she certainly wouldn't have done it, so her poor Aloysius was the guinea pig, but how could she be mad? He seemed perfectly content wriggling around his home, like always.

She couldn't remember how long she sat in that darkened lab, just watching Aloysius bob around his tank, but it was mesmerizing, and soothing. Her original fear, bloomed from a terrible experience leaving this place that was by all accounts her second home, was stayed at the fins of a tubby little relative of the carp.

It was harmless, and beautiful, the perfect balm to over taxed nerves.

He may have been trying to mutate her fish, but the outcome had rented itself out to making her feel better.

When Tara had nudged one of the double gray doors open with two coffees, a sack of pastries, and tears pooling in her eyes, Molly had been more than willing to allow the younger girl room at her table in front of the fish tank. Apologies always went down better when sugary food was involved, and Molly had quickly put Tara's fears about her poor decision to leave Molly alone to rest as best she could.

She could never have known that a body brought by the authorities contained a living maniac. By the time they had worked their way through two doughnuts a piece and half their coffee, there was another visitor- Donny Mathews- carrying a pretty spray of flowers in a glass vase.

Had Molly had known that a near constant stream of visitors were going to be crashing her lab, she would have tried to make herself look more untouched. Her skin was still off color, her fingers just…no, and she hadn't bothered to do anything with her hair outside of letting it hang down.

It was embarrassing. Especially when Nicholas Hatcher from Microbiology came sauntering in- he was _gorgeous_- to see how she was doing. There he was standing there, being beautiful, as she tried to hide her face by staring hard at his Adonis body, trying to not ramble like she always did when she was nervous.

She had a wild crush on Nic since starting at St. Bart's. He was the classic tall, dark, and handsome kind of guy who loved football, and riding motorcycles. He was witty, charming, and above all else, smart. She could really talk to him, unlike most of the guys she had dated, because discussing the slight variations of a virus that made a person sick confused, bored, or grossed them out. Nic could not only follow, but volley, and that was like an opiate for Molly. Unfortunately he had been dating some Nursing student up until recently, and now that he was single, she looked like something the dogs had drug in. Here he was, dark hair, popping green eyes, dimples and scruff, and she was too chicken because of her face to ask him to lunch.

Maybe she would have eventually found that courage, but she'd never know.

Because Sherlock had turned up.

_She was holding at her sides, trying to stifle her laughter because it really _hurt_ to laugh at this point, but she couldn't help it. _

_Nic was just too funny._

_Eye's streaming from the exertion of both mirth and injury, Molly doubled over in her stool. Nic was leaning back against the counter with his arm's crossed, watching her merriment when the doors blew open._

"_Molly have you seen-" Sherlock stopped abruptly when his steel blue eyes landed on Nic._

_Molly lifted her head to peep over the counter to see him, and his laser like gaze immediately locked on hers, downloading everything she couldn't possibly hide from him: her stance, her coloring, and the wetness on her cheeks, before hardening and turning back to Nic._

"_Sherlock!" She chirped brightly, most excited to see him after so long. "Where have you been?"_

_Nic, stiff from Sherlock's dramatic entrance, finally seemed to dawn with recognition. "You're Sherlock Holmes?" He straightened, pointing a finger at Sherlock who barely managed to suppress lifting a lip in a silent snarl. _

_Molly grasped at the counter to help awkwardly pull herself to her feet- goodness it was like she was ninety with the way she was creaking and groaning- and shuffled over to Sherlock's side, who had yet to stop staring as if Nic might do something fascinatingly quaint. The second she got close, he shifted toward her, his eyes doing a quick sweep of her once more before landing back on Nic. "Sherlock Holmes, meet Nicholas Hatcher." She grandly introduced with a sweep of her hand. "Nic, this is my friend Sherlock."_

"_It's a real pleasure Mr. Holmes. You're rather infamous around here." Nic said as he approached with a friendly hand outstretched._

_Which Sherlock rudely ignored. "Too common." Is all he said before brushing by a startled Nic. _

"_Sherlock." Molly hiss in reprimand. Please not today, not to Nic…_

"_Excuse me?" Nic looked a tad offended._

_Molly tried to run interference. "Just ignore him, he's…"_

"_Bored. With you." Sherlock supplied smoothly before lifting his eyes from his area by his microscope and letting them zero in on Nic. "Get out."_

"_Sherlock!" _

_Nic was frowning over her head. "No, it's alright Molly. I gotta get back to work anyhow since I just came down to see how you were doing." _

_They chatted awkwardly for a minute or two longer before Nic left her with a glowering Sherlock._

"_You know that wasn't nice." She opened as she moved delicately toward her computer. Her ribs had started to ache halfway through the Sherlock and Nic pissing contest- probably from all the built up pressure of not yelling._

"_That depends on your interpretation of the word 'nice'." He was in a weird mood._

"_The standard Oxford definition, Sherlock. You know, the interpretation most children are taught in primary about how to treat others?" She pinched on the last part her sentence as she lowered herself into her chair. "Oh, sweet merciful…" She mumbled quietly as she finally sat all the way down and pulled a drawer open to see if she had some pain relievers floating around with her standby supply of pencils and paper clips. _

_Silence met her ears and she paused in searching her desk drawer for spare Advil tablets to look up. He was watching her with one of those looks that made her feel like he was x-raying her very soul._

_Normally, she would become twitchy under that heavy scrutiny, but today, after his little episode with Nic, she held her ground, even going so far as to raise a challenging eyebrow._

"_He's a womanizer and a cheater." Sherlock said in a steady, quiet voice, turning his head slightly as if unwilling to let the full, bald truth slap her head on, but never breaking eye contact. "He will hurt you because he can."_

_Molly openly stared at him, all aggression gone now. _

"_Data," His warm baritone, something she had always been a high appreciator of, soothed the sting of realizing what a huge mistake she had nearly made. "Will allow you to protect yourself."_

_She swallowed at a lump in her throat. "I- I don't doubt you, but how do you know this?"_

_He seemed bothered by her question. "I've seen him around the institution…multiple times a day even. I've observed him with some of the nursing students, watched him pick a certain caliber of girl. You're his type- small, smart, and open." _

_Molly felt winded. "O-oh." What did she say? And why the hell did she want to go to the bathroom and cry? It's not like she and Nic ever talked to each other more than a few times every couple of weeks in crossing by the cafeteria. They weren't dating, and today had been the first day they had socialized in months._ _There were plenty of things Sherlock had left unspoken. Dozens of things like how the foolish, flighty ones were hurt by him. How she could have easily been one of those girls- she knew she fell hard and fast and, god damn it all, usually for losers or jerks. She could have been taken advantage of, hurt for no reason other than Nic to fulfill an appetite. _

_She was so stupid. She must have looked so, incredibly stupid._

_Damn Boris Little, and damn Nicholas Hatcher too!_

_A day that had started rough, gotten inexorably better, and then tanked once again, had Molly wrung out emotionally. And while she _could_ take full credit for it, she was going to save some of her pride and blame her out of whack feelings on the analgesics she was popping to keep from suffering. _

_Sherlock must have felt bad because he stayed close through the rest of the day. Which sounded heartwarming but really only translated into monitoring every little thing she did from watching her check her email to observing her halfheartedly organize her filing cabinet labeled 1999, to seeing that she ate something other than KitKats- because they were garbage wrapped in garbage with a garbage like flavor and he detested them._

_At some point, she had excused herself to the ladies, where she sniffled pitifully to herself in the handicap stall- because it afforded the most leg room to stretch and have a good cry. _

"_Why am I acting like this?" She asked out loud, listening to her voice resonate off the walls. "We barely had a five minute 'not even' flirting session, so why is this such a big deal?" _

_She wished she could talk to Aloysius…or her mother. But she left her phone in her purse…which was near Aloysius and Sherlock._

_Rubbing viciously at her eyes, she sighed loudly and let the stillness consume the room, listening to that silent buzz of the lighting. Sifting through her thoughts, her feelings, Molly just felt too jumbled to peg what was setting her off._

_It was so frustrating having a body-owning one that she had all her life- and not understanding what was going on with it! Her brain just made up issues into huge ordeals and then went on vacation with the fairies, letting her take the wheel as if she should just _know _what was up. _

_Deciding she had enough time to wallow in self-pity- she could always wallow later when she got home, with the benefit of wine- Molly rinsed her face and cringed. There was no way in a trillion years she could hide the shade of tear blushed eyes from Sherlock Holmes, but she was past the point of worrying what he thought of her crying over stuff- mostly he looked like he ate a slug when she cried, that helpful, compassionate gentleman._

_Snorting, then wincing as her ribs rioted against her lukewarm amusement, Molly drug her fee to the door, and jumped when she saw Sherlock leaning against the wall right outside with a dark look, popped Belstaff collar, and her belongings._

_The second she stepped into the hall, he crossed the gap in one stride, silently gesturing for her to put her jacket on. _

"_Sherlock, what-"_

"_It's been a long day." He interjected over her. "You're ribs are bothering you and sweets are not considered food on any planet." _

"_You're one to talk, you don't even like food." She said, just to say something, as she caved and stuck her bandaged hand into one of the sleeves of the jacket he was holding._

"_I appreciate food." He rallied back, helping slide her other arm into the sleeve. "I just don't feel like wasting my time eating it."_

"_That's the fun part." She reached for her purse but he just slung the strap over his shoulder and gently nudged her forward into walking down the hallway toward reception. _

_He made a noise. "Tedious. But I see how it can appeal to those of lesser intellect."_

_She was mostly immune to his 'people are dim compared to me' comments so she didn't even blink. "You must be a riot at cocktail parties." _

_Together they wandered out into the evening foot traffic of the city, keeping up their constant stream of idle chitchat and putdowns, making their way to Long Lane where she could catch her ride home. _

_At some point, between the short walk to the station entrance from work, Sherlock had acquired a take-out box from somewhere. Molly squinted at it as he held it out to her. "Witchcraft." She said simply, shyly accepting his highly unusual generosity and trying to quell the suspicion that he broke something back in the lab and was schmoozing her to get out of trouble- as if! He never got in trouble, she did for him!_

"_I've got the keys to the city." His grin was small, but solid. Dropping her purse off his shoulder, Sherlock held it out and she shifted her load to accept it. _

_He nodded once and turned to leave, making Molly flounder. She didn't even say thank you, what in the world-_

"_Sherlock!" _

_He barely had looked back when she made her move, pressing herself gently up under his upraised arm, quickly snaking her sore hand around his waist and hugging him to her. She dropped her head onto his lower chest- tried ignoring how nice he smelled- and squeezed him to her for good measure. "Thank you." She said with feeling. "Thank you, Sherlock Holmes." He made a weird choking sound, and she rolled her eyes as she pulled away to look up into his face. He looked scandalized and ridiculous with his arms stuck out to his sides, as if unaware how hugs were supposed to work. _

_A bubbling laugh overcame sore ribs and Molly smiled. "How lucky we are to have friends like us." _

"_What part of being molested is considered 'lucky'?" He grumped jerking his coat into order and dusting his immaculate shirt off. _

_Tugging on his Belstaff- just to mess with him- she snickered quietly. "The part where you like it." His eyes flashed and she knew one of his douchy comments was coming so she blew over his bluster before darting down the station steps. _

"_Have a good night, Sherlock. And thank you, for being there for me."_

* * *

Does this chapter feel random? Good. Tell me about it, i wanna see what theories you can come up with.


	3. Chapter 3

AN- Soooo...this chapter is purely...fun. It's more a character builder instead of actual progress...but I love it nontheless. I don't know why.

Credit to Rocking The Redhead- who is thinking. Also, the reviews I'm getting for this silly story make me grin like a moron.

_*****Italics are past things of beauty_

Mistakes are nudges to you. Let them irritate and remind you to check your work.

**How Lucky You Are**

By: Berouge

Spring had opened with the vivid colors of bright daffodil yellows and rainbow tulips flooding the small gardens and walks all around St. Bart's and London, bringing with them a sense of rejuvenation and hope. It was a season that Molly deeply appreciated arriving after such a long, awful winter full of too many dreadful things. Her ribs had still been on the mend- why the hell they had taken longer than the standard six weeks, she'd blame on the over taxed bones holding outburst after outburst within the confines of polite society. Her poor fingers were also still tender, and she had just accepted that wrapping them until they completely healed would be the only thing she could do. They were nearly completely closed over, but…they definitely didn't look right- which really bummed her out, but it had been a small price to pay in the long run. Little was set for trial soon and she planned to be there to make sure he was stuffed somewhere with a lot of walls between him and the public. Her fingers may be ruined forever- she was seriously not putting any stock into shedding like a cat back to normal and that they didn't have some sort of nerve damage.

Plus, it could have been so much worse.

She was just happy that her face no longer looked like a piece of tired pizza anymore.

Shame she couldn't say she was pleased in other areas…

Sherlock was being a Class A prat. Worse than usual and she could not, for the life of her, figure out what was triggering the dark side of the force in him to flare up- God help him if it were drugs. God. Help. Him. Because. She. Would. Gut. Him. She had been waiting to see if he'd shake out of whatever funk he was lodged in- it's like he made a commitment to poor attitude and they were planning a home and three kids together. She was praying for a quick and brutal divorce.

He was just…mean. To her. All the sodding time! And she did not understand why!

He would snap at her every time she walked into the room- she'd taken to avoiding entering her lab altogether unless absolutely necessary because she just didn't want to fight with him- electing to work in the morgue with all the lights on and a stereo playing a mixed CD of _The Backstreet Boys, N'Sync_, and the _Spice Girls_ on repeat. Something was bothering him, and whatever that something was, she didn't think it had anything to do with her precisely, but he didn't have the social graces to distinguish that unfairly lashing out at her wouldn't soothe whatever was upsetting him.

It had just made things worse.

It could have been her music selection, but who didn't love mid to late nineties pop hits? He probably loathed boy bands, but that was his failing, not hers. Despite how crabby he was being- and it had been going on nearly a month now, he had chosen to keep all cruel comments about her recently acquired, irrational fears to himself- they had nonverbally agreed to specifically not discuss her desire to be surrounded by sounds and light at all times while at work. It had been a _major_ concession from him- even though it was still HER lab and he just burned the eviction notices- and she had respected his respect for her need for audio and visual comfort. She usually, out of a sneaky suspicion based on her observation that he may play a stringed instrument, selected music more suited for those with a classical ear and a flavor for intellectually stimulating compositions.

Poor Britney hadn't made the cut- he maliciously melted that CD on a Bunsen burner when she had stepped out to visit with a family.

When he practically started foaming at the mouth when she had answered a phone call from her mum too close to him- the sound must have angered the not so sleeping beast- Molly had reached her boiling point.

She didn't yell at him, because a fight would have played right into a trap to satiate his need to eat someone alive because he was in foul temper, so instead, she would leave. Grab her things and bail when he became too volatile. Which only seemed to enrage him more, but what was she to do? He didn't have a manual and everything from being quiet, to not being there, to trying to talk to him, all made him mad.

One day, it had been so bad; he was so cold and bitter that she felt like she was going to cry. So she left as soon as she felt the telltale sting high in her nose.

Left him to his own devices and went out to lunch with Tara, not before she shot a text out to Lestrade in hopes he knew something she did not.

'_What did you do to S?'- MH_

_His reply didn't come until after lunch, when the girls were on their way, reluctantly-especially for Molly- back to the lab. It was rather unhelpful. 'I did nothing and am being punished for it.'- GL_

'_Give him a case. Please give him a case!'- MH. She had no trouble begging, her shame had died long ago where a cranky Sherlock was concerned. _

'_I have. Several of them. It's not from my end.'- GL. Well that just plain sucked nuggets. It meant it was something else entirely outside of dull, boring, or below a five on his self-imposed ranking system for case exposure that she had somehow come to know and understand despite her resistance- he would spin like a top when cases were insufficiently lacking in originality, gore, or mystery._

'_Well misery loves company.'-MH_

When they breached from the third week into the fourth- now officially a full month of Sherlock's Negative Nancy act- Molly was at her wits end. This wasn't working. She didn't know what to do, because working near him was becoming almost too much to bare. He was excessively surly- more so than he was on his worst of days- and she was tired of going home exhausted for no reason and dreading heading to work the next morning because he might still be there being the fun suck that he had devolved into. He didn't come in everyday, just a few random times a week, but he would stick around like glue and hate on everything within range.

She needed a vacation and she hated to say it, but it was mostly because of him.

Tara had suggested- with a little too much glee Molly felt- banning him from the building- which has never worked for the record. Sherlock knew how to pick locks- all locks- it seemed. Minimum security doors were mere child's play for him- she was sure he kept a record of his personal best lock picking times because it just seemed like something he would do- but if he ever returned to the land of good cheer, Molly was seriously contemplating asking him to show her how. She had locked herself out of her own apartment enough to see incredible value in such a simple skill.

Things did change eventually, she could remember clearly, because she learned something about him that solidified her determination to never abandon him even if he were acting like a big ghoul. She'd stuck it out for two year and some change so far, why stop anytime soon?

_Pushing hesitantly into the lab- HER lab- one early Thursday morning, now rolling into the fourth week of _Hell _presented by Sherlock Bloody Holmes, Molly caught sight of a hunched figure carding a hand through his hair over and over again. Did he not go home again?_

_He seemed, she paused to really look, he seemed…not good._

_It was extremely disconcerting because 'not good' could mean any number of things with him. Weighing the likelihood of a blistering verbal flambé from that wicked tongue of his, Molly stiffened her heart and upper lip before deliberately making her way over to his counter. He didn't lift his head to snarl at her, nor did he even acknowledge her existence._

_Dropping her keys, coat and bag off on a nearby rolling cart, she took a stool directly to his right and sat quietly, offering him the floor, if he so chose to take it._

_He didn't. _

"_What's wrong, Sherlock?" She asked softly as she plunked her elbows up on the countertop, looking out through the glass windows into the still darkened morgue- firmly ignoring the need to run and turn the lights on in there- Molly waited, braced for whatever he hurled at her._

_He didn't bother to respond to her question. So she plucked up her courage and tried again. "You've been unhappy for weeks now. Greg and I are worried."_

"_Don't waste your time." His voice cut like glass, startling her._

"_I can't do that." _

_He sighed loudly, before abruptly standing to grab his coat. "Save the sentiment too. That won't work on me." _

_Molly shoved from her stool and blocked his retreat, practically making him run into her. _

"_Let me pass-"_

"_No." She said, shaking her head as she looked up into irritated steel blue eyes burdened with matching dark bags. "You don't look so well, and as a member of St. Bartholomew's medical staff-"_

"_You're a pathologist that works on the dead" He snapped._

"_-It is my responsibility to see that you're looked after." She soldiered on, ignoring his bratty comment._

_He tried to step around her, but she moved again. "Molly." He groaned, suddenly more tired than he was seconds prior. _

"_When was the last time you got some rest?" She asked pointedly, hands on her hips as she stared him down from a half dozen inches below his chin._

_He stiffened, and she thought he planned to rebel, to fly into a full-blown tantrum and rip into her for trying to keep him where he didn't want to be- it's what he would normally have done- but when his shoulders sagged a little she felt her concern sky rocket. _

"_I don't know; it's been a while." He said with a voice raw with honesty._

_She almost wished he had taken her head off. "Do you know why?" She asked softly, blindly reaching for her things as she watched him. "What's bothering you?"_

_He suddenly looked lost. "My mind won't stop." _

_Worry tugged at her heart strings, alerting her to the fact this wasn't a standard, relatively harmless, Sherlock quirk. "You're thinking too much?" She guessed, unsure. _

"_No, I have nothing to think about, to work on." He palmed at one of his eyes, tired lines and scruff made him seem older, but when he spoke, he sounded much too young. "It's like…like a big engine that's stuck in top gear, but going nowhere and just burning in useless circles."_

_His mind? _

_She felt her face slacken as she grasped at what he was saying._

_His mind was tearing itself apart from a lack of stimulation? She did not like the sound of that because what could possibly meet the demand of Sherlock's infamous mind and ease this stress? How did she help him? He seemed half dead on his feet, and maybe…that was part of the problem too._

_Snatching up her purse, she carefully linked her arm through one of his, giving him the option, once again, to pull away if he wanted too. _

_He didn't. _

_He must really be slogging it. "Come on, let's get you home."_

"_I'm not a child, Molly." He said stiffly, a little of his own temper flaring to life- which really was impressive because he'd been in a temper for over three weeks straight. It was incredible to see he had anything left in the tank. _

"_That's correct." She agreed as she steered him through the double gray doors. "That's why I'm taking you home and making sure you get some rest." He opened his mouth but she hurried on. "I know you aren't a child, Sherlock. Kids do what they're told."_

_He grumbled something too impalpable for her to catch, but that didn't matter because he was going along with her whether he wanted too or not. She would just leech on him until he wore completely down- or they killed each other; she could be just as stubborn as he could. As they ambled into reception, Molly informed Tara she was taking a personal day, and to have all deliveries dropped into the walk-in - she'd tell Donny Mathews later…if she remembered. Tara took one look at Sherlock, dropped her gaze to Molly, and then back up to Sherlock, before eyeballing Molly with an inquisitive brow. "Sure thing." She said in a drawn out, suggestive voice._

_Sighing, because she knew Tara was going to want 'details' on what she had been up to on her personal day with Sherlock Holmes, Molly kept walking. Sherlock may be observant beyond believable reason, but like a true man, female conversations of the non-vocal variety went right over his head. She wasn't so sure this would typically have been the case. He was near inhuman with that sixth sense of his for discerning things._

_Thank goodness he was so out of it. That would have been humiliating trying to explain._

_They caught a cab near the Long Lane Tube entrance- because hell no was she going to take Sherlock on the train; she wasn't a bomb wielding terrorist intent on causing the innocent pain via Sherlockian Douchbaggery on a short fuse. Sherlock was, however, surprisingly compliant as she herded him around like a six foot toddler, despite his feeble protests and reminders that he was, in fact, 'not a child.'_

_It was strange experiencing him acting like this. _

_Montagu was a quicker trip by cab, and as she helped pull him from the backseat, and paid off the driver, Molly could see that it was none too soon for her poor companion, who was swaying on his feet. "Sherlock." She said softly, catching his sporadic attention as she helped nudge him up the steps to the door. He dug out his keys and managed to jam the right one into the lock, opening the door just as his troll of a land lord came stumping around the corner._

_She sighed. Hard._

"_Oi, 'Olmes! I got'a bone ta pick wif'-" His cockney was more ill managed today than it had been last time, adding to her composure- which had also been under duress for a constant three and a half weeks- cracking and all but Hulking out in the small foyer. _

"_Shut up!" Molly snapped rudely at him, cutting off his loud rant mid roll. "If you hassle us at all in the next few seconds, I will see that Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade of New Scotland Yard, an _extremely_ personal friend of mine, charges you with sexual harassment." She glared at the shorter man for all she was worth, until he held up his hands and backed off- good because that was a blatant lie and she would not have known what to do if he had insisted on heckling them. Lestrade would probably just tell her to suck it up…lazy sod._

"_Pick another day to speak with Mr. Holmes about your concerns." With that, she ushered Sherlock, who was remarkably quiet, up the narrow steps to his- unlocked door, damn it, Sherlock- before shutting it on the troll's nosey face. _

"_You like threatening people with sexual harassment." Sherlock mentioned as he shucked his Belstaff off and dropped it on his couch. _

_She tried not to laugh. "I threaten them with charges of sexual harassment, not with sexual harassment Sherlock. There's a huge difference." _

_He hummed at her as he let his eyes wander around his cluttered flat as if searching for something. Molly left him to his little trip of self-discovery as she shrugged out of her coat and dug around in her purse. "Bed time for you." She said finally, finding the small packet of sleeping pills that she had yet to open. _

"_I'm not going to sleep, so don't bother with -" He started, but she just grabbed his hand and pulled him down the short hall toward the end. Faced with two doors, she picked one and was rewarded with a- astoundingly clean- bathroom. Struggling to get the idea of Sherlock, well dressed, impatient Sherlock, scrubbing the bog out her head, Molly turned and bumped him into the small room. "Clothes off. Brush your teeth."_

"_Molly." He whined at her, and she had to bite her lip to keep from giggling at how petulant he looked._

"_Sherlock." She mimicked him. "You can do it, or I will do it for you." She would too…maybe…_

_Probably not, but he wasn't operating at full capacity so he didn't call her bluff, just turned with a groan and reached for his black toothbrush._

_Nodding, she spun and pushed the other door open and found his bedroom. Curious beyond reason, Molly took her time snooping- she refused to feel weird, she refused! He did it to her all. The. Time! Last week he had found her emergency stash of _Reese's_ cups in her desk and used the chocolate to test poison sweets with on mice from Genetics- His closet was open and full of suits, dress shirts, belts, slacks and trousers, all in dark colors - which she approved of because he could wear the hell out of those colors. His bed was made- again, another mind stalling realization that Sherlock wasn't a complete bachelor and slave to the slob arts. Looking back over her shoulder where she could see him brushing sullenly at his teeth, frowning so hard she was surprised the mirror didn't crack, she wondered about the past few weeks. _

_He alluded to the fact that he wasn't sleeping well, so maybe a made bed wasn't that terribly unusual._

_It did make her stop and contemplate the last time she had made her own bed, however._

_His room wasn't as lively as the main area, probably because he never seemed to sleep the vampire, but it was decorated enough to show that Sherlock's tastes ran more toward eclectic vintage rather than modern- she would have bet money he was a modern guy what with him being a tech junkie and all, and she would have lost. Beside his wardrobe, he liked his things lived in. _

_She reached for his dark blue bedding and turned the covers down, fluffed the pillows and turned to close his curtains, dimming the room as much as possible. She heard him muttering to himself in the bathroom behind the now closed door, so she took the opportunity to pop down the kitchen. _

_She knew he had level five bio-hazards somewhere in his flat- she gave him doggie bags every so often for good behavior- so she steered well clear of his refrigerator. Best not know what he had stored in there- she hadn't forgotten the head that had vanished from the large walk-in a little under a week ago. _

_It took her a couple of tries, but she eventually found a cabinet with clean glasses tucked away in precise lines. Filling one with water- and taking a few sips herself on her way back to him- Molly set the water glass on his night stand and cracked one of the small capsules she held in her hand open, letting the fine powder empty into his glass. Molly wasn't stupid about Sherlock's drug issues, and there was no way she was forking over a handful of pills to a guy that suffered through rehab three times. It would send mixed signals and she would off herself before she'd ever gateway Sherlock back into his user status. But people sometimes needed the help of antihistamines to assist in reaching a full REM cycle. Sherlock's mind never seemed to shut down, and if that were the case, he wasn't getting enough sleep, which had damaging consequences of its own that seriously needed to be taken into consideration. Selecting the more merciful of the two evils, Molly doped his water so he could power off and let his mind and body reboot. _

_No wonder the poor soul sought out the effects of a chemical induced haze if he struggled like this in the past. _

_Swirling the glass until the powder dissolved, Molly took a small mouthful to see if there was an obvious unnatural note that would put him off before setting the glass down and moving to peep at a couple of pictures in pretty silver frames on his tall chest of drawers that she had been dying to go and see. She recognized Mycroft, his brother, in a few of them and a much younger, still grouchy looking Sherlock in another. There was an older couple too, and she was betting on them being his parents. It was weird seeing evidence of Sherlock existing in another form other than what he was now. It was obvious that he did not pop into existence at six feet with a shaky attitude and questionable morals, but seeing the sweet-faced woman in the picture before her, Molly was insanely curious about how she managed to produce such an incredible…git. Her perusal of his personal life came to a reluctant end, however, when he stepped out of the bathroom in a pair of baggy sleep pants and a simple red t-shirt. _

_He looked good in red, her mind observed- something he continuously gave her a hard time for not doing enough of- and Molly heartily agreed. Ol' Sherlock could turn heads normally in his sharp suits with the crisp lines- until he opened his mouth and nuked a city block with everybody's carefully hidden secrets- but this Sherlock had something a little _**more**_ about him. Probably, half crazed from lack of sleep, he was easier to approach than he generally was- she wouldn't know, she got to wade through all sorts of Holmesian B.S. all the time._

_She was such a lucky girl…_

_Tilting her head a little, she watched him, trying to peg what she was sensing that dulled the harsh edges of the man before her. Was it the adorable- probably fake as plastic- befuddled expression? His lack of focus? His bare feet- why the hell was she looking down there when he was wearing that shirt- ooooh. Or was how that red shirt, which set his dark hair off so nicely, also hugged the round muscle of his shoulders and chest- ah! Damnit, focus Molly you voyeur! _

_He was still muttering to himself and she shook her head to get rid of those disturbing thoughts as he stopped in his doorway, sweeping his steel blue gaze about the room before landing on her standing near his dresser. "Uh…" He said at a loss. Splendidly articulate today, eh Sherlock?_

_This was funny, but she had to lock her jaw so she didn't titter and spook him. Her goal was to get him to sleep. "Bed, Sherlock." She pointed for emphasis. _

_He looked suspicious. "What are you doing?"_

"_Making you go to bed." She said simply, moving over to him and his shirt. "And you have two choices, but both mean you sleep, so don't get excited."_

_He watched her as she bumped at his side, practically pushing him over to his large bed. "It's not a choice if the outcome is unaffected."_

"_It's a ruse, you're right."_

_He seemed ready to rebel. "I won't sleep."_

_She bobbed her head. "You will if you lie down." _

_He grumbled, stopping at the bedside, and she learned that he wouldn't budge. "No."_

_Sucking patience out of thin air, Molly turned him around to look at her. "You can either lie down willingly, or I can use that sexual harassment you mentioned earlier and handcuff you to the bed. It's your choice."_

"_You don't have handcuffs." He said pointedly, narrowing his eyes at her. _

_Molly blinked back and wildly pulled something off the top of her head. "I'm really good with belts, Sherlock, wanna find out how good?" Oh, my god, that did not sound like such a come on in her head! What was she _doing_? _

_He squinted, and for a heart pounding second, she though he was going to say 'yes', in which case they'd both be disappointed because she was totally making that bit about belts up._

_What the fresh hell was wrong with her?_

_Taking the chance from him, Molly pushed hard at his chest, making him tip over like a cow right onto the soft sheets. "Hey!" He squawked and she snickered as she grabbed the glass of water and held it out to him. _

_He reached automatically for it but hesitated taking a drink. "Why do I need this?"_

_Drat, figures. Play it cool. Shrugging Molly improvised. "Water has a calming effect on the body. Studies show people rest easier if they nip a bit before lying down." He wasn't convinced, so she went with the truth. "Drink. It'll help you sleep." _

_He still wasn't going for it. "Please, Sherlock? You need rest." She wheedled, trying to not feel guilty about roofing his drink like a rapist. _

_He downed the entire glass, and she blinked. That…was unexpectedly painless. Taking the empty cup from him, she gestured for him to lie on his back. "Molly, seriously, I'm not a child." He protested for what must have been the tenth time since she found him haunting her lab, but there was no heat to it._

"_People deserve to be taken care of when life is cruel, Sherlock." She said, tugging the cover and comforter up to his shoulders. "And, you may find it unnecessary, but I don't. Friends look out for each other."_

_He was watching her through cracked lids. "Molly…" he slurred in that deep baritone she liked so much as either exhaustion or the pills or both started to unmoor him, pulling him away._

"_Sherlock." Molly cocked her head and smiled softly down at him. "Sweet dreams."_

_He was out before she even made it to the hallway._

_Padding quietly down into the front room, Molly reached her hands high above her head in a toe curling stretch. She should go, let him sleep and then call- she meant text, as he didn't do phone calls- to see how he was feeling in a few hours without expecting a response. Except, she let her eyes trail all over his home, she didn't really want to leave him. He'd been fighting himself for weeks, and she knew what that could be like- she had struggled a lot since Little curb stomped her into the lab floor. _

_Sherlock was stronger than she was, however, when it came to in-house uphill battles. She usually ended up crying when she worked herself into a fix. He made people cry. _

_She didn't want him to wake up alone, because that sucked too. Plus she didn't really want to go back to work- she hadn't taken a day off in a month, because Sherlock was bound to maul someone if she weren't there to fall on the sword for humanity and the hospital staff. So she toed out of her shoes, and pulled her hair tie out, forgoing the pony tail, because hey, nobody was going to look at her._

_She picked up his coat, and deposited it on one of the arm chairs, so as to not accidently put her feet on it- that would be sacrilege and he would probably instant transmission himself two inches from her face to freak out over it. Standing back, Molly let her eyes stream around Sherlock's central focus, taking in everything she saw the last time she had been there- another god awful terrible night that gave her nightmares- and several new things. _

_For instance, she had not noticed the music stand the first time over. She slinked forward, and on careful inspection, found the half dozen sheaves of paper were to some complicated concerto by…some Russian sounding guy she had never heard of before. Peering down at all the little notes, dashes, and lines and symbols, Molly truly considered it a foreign language. No wonder genius's tended to be gifted musicians. _

_She selected the top page, and tilted the paper- yellowed with age and wear- and discovered her original hunch of him playing a violin to be true, as this was a violinist's solo in D Major._

_She mentally patted herself on the back for her good deducing. Maybe someday he'd play something for her, because, purely judging his skill by the hot mess in front of her, he must be good. Outside of the piano, the violin was her second favorite instrument, and not surprisingly, she couldn't play either one. _

_She could play a mean pair of spoons though. Like a hillbilly. Oh, heaven help her…_

_Setting the sheet music back on the busy stand, she moved off along one wall, completely dedicated to books. She, for some reason, never really pegged Sherlock as a reader- he was too impatient to sit still for long periods of time plus he just seemed to just know stuff without having to crack open even Google- but judging by this heterogeneous collection, he either was a fast read, or just absorbed the written information via osmosis, because who in their right mind would read REAL ESTATE LAW IN THE MIDDLE AGES for fun? She found a lot of literature on bee keeping and flowers. He had books in foreign languages she barely recognize- he could understand Mandarin?- and several on the sciences. _

_It was interesting seeing this side of him. The silent bits that gave away more information than he ever volunteered willingly- she was going to ask him about the cook book on cinnamon rolls because if he baked and was holding out on her, heads would roll._

_Moving on, she found his violin, propped up on an end table in a scruffy case. Carefully lifting the lid, she felt her breath catch at the gorgeous- and old- looking stringed instrument nestled snuggly within. The warm wood fairly glowed in the morning light, denoting both age and devotion of those who had played it throughout the years. Terrified that his Spidey senses might be tingling because she was this close to something he obviously loved- because it was delicate and still intact- Molly carefully settled the lid down, and backed away._

_Deciding she had pried enough into his home without his knowledge- as of yet, he'll probably know the second he sees the dust patterns when he wakes up- Molly turned to head into the kitchen to scrounge up some tea when she saw it. Grinning from its spot on the mantel piece, between two pillars of books and knifed mail, a skull she knew very well watched her every move with soulless eyes. Figures Sherlock would put him somewhere that people couldn't ignore from the doorway, the oddball. Molly cheekily beamed back at Dubby- the name the skull had been filled under as his true name was lost to the ages. She did know that he was some hundred and eighty years long dead, found in an old cellar down near the docks by a few shipmen almost a year ago. It was nice to know that she could give Dubby a home, and that Sherlock liked him enough to allot space for him._

_God, they were so weird, she and he._

_Around this point, a jaw cracking yawn overcame her, and Molly gave herself a good shake to work it off. Well it looked like those sleeping pills she had originally gotten to help her close her eyes at night when her ribs throbbed, were a lot more potent than she had assumed if a sip was doing her in._

_Sherlock would be out for hours, so she made herself at home- completely ignoring the little voice in her head saying 'you need to ask permission first', because he certainly never did. He had commandeered his own telescope, body parts, and had reorganized her solutions into his own preferred system that she had been forced to learn. _

_The git._

_She made tea, found something mind rotting and trashy on the telly- Sherlock had cable, yay!- and snuggled down into his couch to watch _Jerry Springer _like they weren't planning on making it anymore. The sun glinted through the window, drawing shadows and making sunbeams. Small dust motes flickered and danced in the warm rays, and Molly quickly found herself zoning out._

_She was fast asleep by the second round of _Jerry Beads_ and before the clock struck nine a.m._

As brilliant of a man as he was, Molly still seemed surprised that he could degrade so fast into a giant child. She was willing to make concessions on that image since he did struggle to be…normal. Not about being too smart or always gunning to be right- because he took particular delight in hammering that right into the ground - but all that mental muscle must bulge oddly in some places, warping facets to his personality that usually never shined. In this case of insomnia brought on by hyperactive synapsis, he over simplified and shut down something vital while revving other things into the red zone.

It would be only one of a handful of times that she would see this side of him- at least for the time being- because he had learned to keep a tighter ship on his breakdowns.

This time had been special since it was the first episode since Bexley Park that he couldn't turn to drugs to ease the neuron activity. Apparently- he told her this once, and only once and she was under at least half the impression that it had slipped out more than he actively sought to tell her this- the drugs helped him think, relieved the stress of that huge engine so he could function easier.

It broke her heart.

She almost ruptured and leaked tears all over him when he had voiced his frame of mind on the matter, even if he had not intended for her to see, because it clearly showed that he was well aware that he didn't fit in. That he was alone in more ways than one because of his mental gifts, and that he didn't go without suffering sometimes.

"_There's nothing wrong with you." She had said immediately, ticked- because if she got angry, she would hold off bawling like baby- that he thought such negative things about himself. She wanted to believe that he believed he was too good to care what other's thought. In this instance, she wanted him apathetic._

_He snorted as he pretended to intently dissect his written formulas. "You're a terrible liar."_

_She scowled at him from across the table. "There isn't anything wrong with you." Sherlock looked up, no doubt to belittler her idealistic image of him, and she glared harder. "Being smart is not anomalous or undesirable. Using what you see in front of you to determine what's going on is a skill set. Telling everyone about so-n-so's extramarital affairs is just rude, but that's neither here nor there."_

"_People don't do what I do." He said dully, and she had to keep from throwing her own tantrum to force him to see what she saw. So he could see how unique and amazing that gift made him._

"_You're exceptional, and that's not bad." She countered loyally, jutting her jaw, daring him to disagree. "If they," she stabbed a -still- bandaged finger toward the double gray doors, "Can't see that, then it's their inadequacy holding them back and not yours, and thusly not worth a damn ounce of your consideration. Or mine!"_

He said it didn't bother him, and she truly could tell that a majority of the time, he was correct. Anderson could dig and dig, and get nothing. Random people, offended by his blunt, removed, and seemingly uncaring attitude couldn't shake him. Lestrade could guilt him, but he would never go so far as to ever intentionally try and hurt Sherlock so he was out.

Mycroft seemed to be able to hit the right combination of buttons to piss him off, but those were the magical powers inherent in all siblings so she didn't count that either. Plus, if Sherlock were her brother, she'd want to torture him back some as well on principle alone.

It was just on particular days- rare as they were even to this day- a kink in that impenetrable armor would show, and she was beginning to consider it was more internal than external forces that were the cause.

Sherlock was his own worst enemy.

She took offense because, while he could be difficult, unruly, mean, and cold, he was her friend- he still looked like he wanted to vomit when she said that to him- and she didn't like anyone being mean to her friends, but how could she fight off the antagonists if they were demons from behind the friendly lines? She could only do so much, and prayed that he saw that and learned to accept himself for the remarkable person he was.

If she could see it, why couldn't Sherlock Bloody Holmes?

_She was warm and ultra-super comfortable. That kind of relaxed that only happens when a person goes to bed worry free, and wakes the same way._

_That's when she felt the buzzing. _

_Her phone was warbling in her coat pocket, which was pressed into her side. Groaning like an old man, Molly kept her eyes closed and slowly dug around until she found the right pocket. Palming the stupid mobile, she hit a random button and grouched into it. " 'Lo."_

"_Er, Sherlock." A male's voice said, and even in her sleepy state, she could tell they were confused. _

"_He's asleep." She sighed, wondering faintly why someone was calling her about him. "Can I take a message?" Her mother's manners went deep._

"_Who is this?" He said in a slightly pompous voice._

_Sleep continued to shed off as she rose up from its comforting depths to become more and more aware of others. "_Who _is _this_?" She countered just as haughty, albeit childishly, irked that she had been roused for this conversation with Sir Rudeasheck about someone else._

"_Mycroft." _

_Mycroft? Molly jerked her head up, and pulled the phone away to look at it. This was not her phone. Hers was a knock off Blackberry lookalike from Samsung….this was a real Blackberry. Dropping her eyes to her jacket, she also found it to be a warm and heavy Belstaff trench coat and not her girly purple pea coat. "Oh." _

_She hung up on him._

"_Did you just hang up on Mycroft?" Sherlock's voice floated over to her, making her lurch upright, warm coat pooling down low on her shoulder and lap._

"_Uh…." Her voice scratched as she rubbed at her eyes. "He was being rude." Because that was a good reason to give for answering someone else's phone and then disconnecting on their relatives. _

_Blinking, she could finally see that he was tucked in at the kitchen table_ _with his laptop, one long leg folded underneath him while the other was kicked out across the floor. He was still in his sleep clothes- and that infernal shirt!- and his dark hair was all mussed up- more so than usual at least. She was sure her bed head didn't look any better but he didn't care, so neither did she. His face was under lit from the light of his screen, but she immediately could tell he looked and felt better._

"_Typical of him, really." Sherlock scratched absently at a spot on his chest, not looking at her as he browsed the web._

_Molly took a moment to notice the telly was still on- _Steve Wilkos_ was busy throwing chairs so she knew she was missing the good stuff- and it was dark outside. "What time is it?" She yawned just as the Blackberry began to trill the song of its people._

"_Ten after nine." He supplied and Molly did a double take. _

"…_I slept the clock around." She realized stunned- the weeks of torture must have really sucked her dry too- as she unearthed herself from her cozy spot under his coat, and carried his phone over to him. "When did you get up?" _

_He hummed as he tapped something into a search engine, turning his other palm up to accept the still quivering phone. "Little under an hour ago." And he hadn't poked her awake to get her to stop drooling on his couch? Or turn the TV off while stating loudly that he thought she purposefully watched intellectually suppressing programs- she did, what of it!? But he had not woken her up, and he had covered her with his big, warm jacket?_

_Was he sick? She immediately pressed her hand to his forehead, firmly ignoring his unimpressed stare. Nope, he felt normal. She squinted at him, and he slowly arched an eyebrow at her, probably trying to deduce if she had lost her marbles. _

_Yeah, well, back at you buddy. _

_She was comforted to see the bags reduced in appearance, if not completely gone, from under his pale eyes. Up close, though, he still seemed rough around the edges. _

_Poor guy._

_She retreated to her spot as he hit the answer button and proceeded to torment his older brother in the tradition of younger brother's everywhere. It was cute, if not exactly PG or appropriate for mixed company. She could see that he rather enjoyed sparring and very rarely ever had the opportunity by how showy and technical he turned a phrase, but she did notice that no matter how irritated, angry, prickly or obstinate Sherlock got, he really never swore. He tossed around some rather impressive insults, cleverly crafted and perfectly implemented for greatest impact, but profanity seemed like it lacked finesse or a sufficient challenge- or it was something else because she knew for a fact Sherlock had no qualms about barging his way to whatever he wanted and tying people into emotional knots, sans diplomacy and manners, according to Lestrade. It wasn't a verbatim quote from her dear DI, because Lestrade could color his language shades darker than what was really necessary, and she was almost paranoid to repeat a fraction of it because her mother may hear about it…in a city with millions, there was still a chance._

_As awful of a person as it made her look, she thought it was entertaining watching Sherlock go after- other-people. But she would walk herself into to traffic on Westminster before every admitting that out loud. He did not need encouragement. _

"_I was asleep. People do that you see." He said, rubbing at his hair, making it stick up like crazy. "She was sleeping." His face blanked. "I'm deleting that as you speak."_

_She shook her head as she excavated her purse out from under the sofa, pulling out her mobile to see she had missed several calls from her mother, one from Tara- nosey girl- and a few texts from Lestrade asking if she finally snapped and had Sherlock 'put down.'_

'_In a manner of speaking.'- MH_

'_What did you do?'- GL_

_Roofied him, but Lestrade was all cop…and she didn't want him teasing her about drugging Sherlock, since that would just invite retaliation from the big, genius-y git. 'Made him go home so he could sleep.'-MH_

'_Serioulsy? He just went home, willingly?'-GL. What kind of girl did he take her for?_

'_He's not been getting any rest, so I had to use extreme measures to get him to bed.'-MH. The second she hit send, she wished with all her might she could un-send it. Lords, what an embarrassing thing to shoot off with no solid context to put it in perspective!_

'_Where are you?'- GL_

_Here we go… 'In his front room.'-MH_

"_Did your diminutive, plebeian mind toil all day for such a-" his eye's widened. "Deleted!"_

_She shot a quick text to her mother saying she'd call tomorrow, before she started to gather her things to go on home. Best to get out of his space before he started blasting off at the mouth over intrusions and saliva coated throw pillows. They had a good thing going, but best not push her luck._

_Still, she sneakily rubbed her hand quickly where her face had been smashed into the couch material- felt dry. Small miracles really did make a difference._

"_No." He grunted, and she looked over at him. "No. Not doing that either…No." His steel blue gaze traveled over to her. "No. No." _

_She made a silly face at him and he actually looked like he lost his train of thought. Grinning at his huffy expression at being caught, she stooped to grab her purse. _

"_You. Stay." He said loudly, pointing at her. "Never you, Mycroft." He flicked his fingers like he was playing invisible finger cymbals before snorting. "And that's my cue." He hung up without preamble and went back to his web surfing as if nothing had disturbed him in the first place._

_Molly was stuck in a half crouch before slowly straightening out. That wasn't completely weird or anything…_

"_It's raining. No point traipsing across the city." He didn't bother to look at her as he enlightened on what he had meant._

_Was he actually asking her to stay? My God, what a weird and out of character day it was…_

_Raining? She dropped her bag and scuttled over to his window and saw, sure enough, that is was indeed raining. What happened to the sun and dust specks dancing in warm beams of light? _

_Well... that was inconveniently timed. "Great job London." She grumbled to herself. She did really want to go home, even though she liked hanging out with Sherlock when he was non-neurotic, semi-decent, and lazy. She just wanted to take her bra off more. _

"_Plus you left your keys at the lab." Her eyes widened._

_Shit!_

That was the first time she had stayed the night over at his place- there would be others, but the first time would always be remembered as the sweet little thing that it was. Not that he respected personal boundaries or social walls constructed to make people feel awful about enjoying interacting with their peers, but when they weren't at the lab, when there wasn't work to be done, people to be taken care of, or cases to be solved, the gulf between them shrunk down until it was just Molly and Sherlock and Sherlock's ego. When they hung out together- mostly by accident because he wasn't one to suggest they go to the zoo unless it was to pinch Squirrel monkeys or something- it was almost effortless.

It turned out that Sherlock could be a good time when he wanted to be. Not so much the consummate host, but more the relaxed guy that didn't care what you did as long as it didn't involve him having to do it for you- at least that was how he was that evening, but she couldn't tell if it was because he was still not himself, or if it was being in an environment he could completely control. She made tea- which he nitpicked her over and she told him to go flush his head- they ordered Chinese takeout- which he nitpicked the poor bastard that answered the phone on whether it was true Szechuan and Dim Sum by the sort of sauces and cooking styles utilized for almost ten straight minutes before she snatched the phone from him and apologized profusely, praying furiously that nobody spit in their food. She channel surfed the telly, while he rode the internet tide and never missed an opportunity to ask a billion questions as to why she chose _Dance Moms _instead of something- _Dear God, Molly, why?!-_ anything else. When their food arrived, he commandeered the thirteen cups of sauce he wanted to try plus all the egg rolls, while she attempted to select a movie that he wouldn't find too dull. _V for Vendetta_ was on and she liked it well enough to give it a shot in Sherlock saturated company.

He was good up until the bald Evey came back into V's little cave for the last time, and then he did his data breakdown of how that movie failed because of sentimental nonsense, blah, blah, blah.

She would consider it a success if only because he was engrossed enough to actually watch it with her.

As the evening had ticked on- she had been worried about staying up all night because she slept all day, something she still could not believe she had done- Molly could feel drowsiness creeping slowly back into her mind, making her zone out more and more through whatever show they were currently watching- okay, she was watching as Sherlock had found some police archive to hack just so he could send Lestrade an email from within the firewall as opposed to outside it.

It had been well after two a.m. when she had finally succumbed to sleep once again. When Lestrade had eventually caught up with her a few days after, he demanded to know what she had been thinking leaving herself so exposed and vulnerable.

"_I was thinking I was tired and comfy." She rolled her eyes. "Jeeze, Greg, what kind of person do you think Sherlock is?"_

_He leaned back into the counter, propping his elbows up on the table top as he watched her at her desk. "The kind of person who isn't above torturing defenseless little kids. You he wouldn't even have hesitated over."_

_She gave him a flat look. "That was one time, and you make it sound more dramatic than it actually was."_

"_He purposefully wrote 'Santa isn't real and you're adopted' ON their Christmas letter to Santa." Greg pointed out. "Plus he knocked their tree over- which he claimed wasn't supposed to happen as he barely managed to contain his excitement as I handcuffed him for breaking and entering." _

_Good point._

"_He wasn't himself?" She slunk down in her chair. "He spent the entire time I was zonked out hacking your security system."_

_Lestrade appeared to be in pain. "I should have known. He labeled all my files 'Incompetent reason' and then a number. I apparently had six hundred files and I've been sorting them out ever since."_

_Molly was impressed despite trying not to be. "Isn't that some kind of felony?" Oops Sherlock._

"_Yes." Greg looked both pissed and pleased. "But he discovered several faults within the firewall security; some could have been potential disasters. He left a small batch of instructions on how to find them and fix them." _

_She was worried. "Is he going to be charged with anything? Because if he is, I wasn't the one who squealed on him." _

_He rubbed his face. "Not this time. Apparently, since he sniffed out those huge flaws, the Chief is going to look the other way. Next time, stop him."_

Why did people keep insisting she try and get him to do or desist from doing something? He never listened to her unless he was half dead, or in a weird mood- which was a lot like spotting big foot, she wasn't totally sure she saw something that could definitively prove anything.

And while Lestrade would quite possibly always look at Sherlock slightly suspiciously- he'd be a fool not too, since the man kept bio-hazards near his carrots- Molly felt his need to tell her to be careful around their eccentric friend was a little uncalled for.

If she had awoken without eyebrows, it would have been entirely different.

Instead of missing things, he had draped her with his Belstaff before buggering off to bed himself.

Sherlock could be sweet when he put his mind off it.

But all good things had to come to an end at some point, and for Molly it was the next morning.

_When her phone alarm went off for work the next morning, she felt like dying. _

_She was warm and her bed was so nice. But she needed to at least check on things at work- the city's criminals didn't take holidays unless they succeeded in robbing someone- and move any and all new arrivals from the large walk-in before anybody from overheard found out. _

_If Bernard wasn't still in a temper about her giving Sherlock free run of the place- like she could have stopped him- she wouldn't have worried. Alas, he was mad enough to 'accidently let slip' that she had bent the strict 'no new cadavers in the ENTER ONLY storage' regulations._

_Her face pressed into the cushioned backrest of Sherlock's couch and she moaned, trying to somehow will time to stop moving for another few hours so she could lie there and smell the faint tobacco smoke and feel the warm weight of Belstaff._

_Plus, she was slightly screwed about going home. Since she stupidly left her keys to both the lab and her apartment in the lab itself…she would have to go to work wearing the same thing she had worn yesterday and wait for somebody to open up the doors for her._

_If she were lucky, Tara would be the first one there instead of anyone else that she had seen the day prior._

_Tara had known she had left with Sherlock. Tara could also be a gossip mill. Maybe she should reconsider what she considered 'lucky'._

"_Crud…" People were going to talk. Unfortunately, for her, Sherlock was an annoyingly smart prat to people who weren't used to being mentally outshined and so he was naturally a favorite topic to shoot the bull over in the break room. She knew for a fact she wasn't nearly as fascinating, but since he lurked down in her department, she would have been surprised if her name wasn't kicked around just by association. She knew Tara's was and she was just the morgue's receptionist. Showing up in yesterday's attire, without showering or even combing her hair would just fan the flames and she did not need any excuse to have Executive's attention being directed to her. She had enough people breathing down her neck in the form of three DI's, Scotland Yard and the MET. Plus Oxford and London's medical school department chairs wanting order's…_

"_Kill me…" Her voice muffled as she burrowed harder into the sofa back. _

_When her alarm kicked up the volume- a terrible feature that Samsung's ideas department thought would be an ingeniously heinous idea- letting her know she had only a half hour to make it to work, Molly gave up and rolled over, slapping hand onto her mobile to shut it up. _

_The flat was silent and still- he must have joyfully shut the TV off when she had fallen asleep last night. She pushed the heavy coat off her and sat up, ignoring the twinge of cold that made her toes curl and skin shiver. _

_Ugh, she did not want to go tramping through the cold and quite possibly wet. She only had her tennis shoes- because she dropped a retrieval bag of blood and it popped like a water balloon all over her shoes and pants last week- and water proof they were not._

_Looks like today was going to be a hot mess day. _

_Pushing to her feet, she snatched her phone up and checked the time to see she still had a good twenty five minutes- possibly even thirty-five is she had to wait for Tara to show up and unlock the building's morgue- to get to work._

_She sighed softly as she grabbed the Belstaff that had so loyally kept her warm and draped it out over Sherlock's chair. Speak of the devil, where was he?_

_She peeked down the short hall and saw his door was closed. He really must have been exhausted…the poor soul. Hopefully he would be back to his usual irrepressible self when she ran into him next. Smiling as she patted his coat, Molly took a moment to stretch before quietly moving over to step into her shoes and grab her own jacket. _

_Penning a quick and simple thank you, she stuffed it into the pocket of his Belstaff and slipped out his door- locking it - and padded as soundlessly as she could down the narrow set of stairs so as to not draw the troll's attention. He really didn't bring the best out in her, and judging by how he reacted to Sherlock, he was someone she didn't want to know anyway._

_Pushing the front door open, Molly shivered as the cool damp kissed her face, making her bury her nose into the color of her jacket. She chanted to herself how much she loved her job as she hopped off the stoop and practically pranced down the sidewalk, avoiding puddles, all the way to the ever busier Gloucester where she could hopefully flag down a taxi. Crossing Upper Berkley- and nearly being taken out by one truck and a black sedan going in opposite directions- she hit the curb and flung her hand out, hoping a cab would break from the pack for her._

_The sound of wet tires racing past kept her from getting too close to the street, where a rogue puddle would just add to the 'barely managed to function' look she was rocking. Maybe that was part of it? Did cabs pick up pathetically assembled people or did they avoid them with prejudiced- she would. Plus it was still dark outside from the heavy clouds hovering low on the city, so maybe they couldn't see her- something she was not in the mood to entertain as a possibility. How the heck did Sherlock managed to snag cabs so easily? _

_She raised her arm again, calling out for a taxi even though she knew they couldn't really hear her over the roar of traffic. It just felt like something she should do._

_Her efforts weren't baring fruit, and she was rapidly resigning herself to locating the nearest bus route- she was not a bus fan- when someone finally answered her call for a ride._

_The black sedan that had nearly smooshed her when she had crossed Upper Berkley pulled smoothly up to her curb and crouched right in front of her like a cat. _

_Maybe it was just a coincidence? _

_Looking quickly down the street where there were plenty of spaces for a car to slide into, Molly slowly moved away, walking down the sidewalk, hoping a real cab would swoop in, alleviating the stress of having a sleek and intimidatingly expensive car prowling along in her wake. She felt like she was being hunted and repressed the urge to hasten her pace. _

_She wished she hadn't gotten out of bed- er, off Sherlock's couch. _

_At least there, the biggest worry she had to contend with was a hand dipped in water to see what would happen. Or possibly waking up minus a few chunks of hair or eyebrows._

_The sedan pulled suddenly forward, ahead of her, and stopped. The passenger's side door opened and young woman stepped out, and turned to meet Molly's eyes._

"_Ms. Hooper." She said it like a statement. _

_Molly resisted bolting like a frightened deer. "What do you want?"_

"_My employer wishes to speak with you." Her voice was even toned, almost methodical in its delivery of information._

"_Now is not a good time, I'm late for work." Molly gripped her purse strap harder. She was going to buy a large can of pepper spray. A huge can of the strongest stuff on the market and whenever she went anywhere she'd have a hand wrapped firmly around it. She twisted around, intent on heading back the way she came so they couldn't immediately follow her._

"_Ms. Hooper." A new voice this time. Molly felt her shoulder's stiffen as she turned to see Mycroft unfolding himself from the back seat. He looked as she remembered all those months ago outside of St. Mary's, a smart three piece wrapped around Holmesian brilliance and efficiency. His umbrella was splayed open above him as he stepped delicately up onto the wet sidewalk. "A moment of your time for a ride to work."_

_Why did this still feel like a trap? "Mr. Holmes." She cleared her throat and internally winced as her voice trembled slightly. "Do you normally go around scaring young ladies or is this a special occasion?"_

_He was watching her again, x-raying her thoughts right inside her very own head. "My apologies, Ms. Hooper. I have a few enquiries regarding my dear brother. His laconic dole of information as of late has been concerning."_

_She furrowed her brow at him. "You just spoke with him last night." She pointed out with a mental wince so strong it about gave her a headache as she recalled unintentionally answering not _her _phone before impolitely hanging up on the detailed man before her._

_Mycroft's eyes gleamed and Molly knew, just _knew_, that he was remembering their last- not even- conversation as well. "Indeed, and his inveterate tendency to overlook certain aspects of his behavior have led to me seeking other options." He waved his hand back to his car. "Just a few questions Ms. Hooper."_

_He didn't sound like he was giving her choice. She stepped backwards. "You Holmes brothers are too pushy."_

"_A family trait, I'm afraid." He wasn't going to budge, not that it really mattered; she did not have to get into that vehicle with him. She could just walk away; ignore his attempts to converse with her. _

_Molly let her eyes drift to the speeding traffic, thinking hard. Why was she so averse to discussing anything with him, scaring her aside? He had helped her with getting Sherlock his skull- something he could have flat out refused and possibly called and complained to her superiors over and they would have listened because Mycroft Holmes wasn't someone easily ignored- and he had barely batted and eye over the whole thing. Sherlock ranted about him- granted Sherlock had something to say about everyone that pulled his notice- but that really had nothing to do with her. _

_Was it because this was about Sherlock that she didn't want to speak with him? Turning to see that Mycroft had assumed a more relaxed stance, as if preparing to wait her out- a total one-eighty from his brother who would have paced troughs into the concrete while spewing all sorts of rude things- Molly pursed her lips._

_Aside from her ill-mannered handling of the phone call, they really hadn't spoken to each other enough for her to form any sort of negative repertoire about him. Sherlock had his opinions but he gave those out for free and usually against the general conscience's wishes. But Sherlock's business was his own and she had enough exposer to the world to respect such wishes as to not share personal business with others._

_She had not forgotten about the media's speculations and spin doctoring about her Lab attack. How it felt like such an invasion and how she had no control over it._

_He would quite possibly be mad if she told things about him to his brother. This would be construed as a betrayal- a real one, not just her figuratively twisting his arm- and she couldn't do that to him. Not now, not ever._

_Molly sighed. "I'm not comfortable gossiping about friends, Mr. Holmes, even if a particularly peculiar one of them is of interest to you."_

_Mycroft tilted his head- so much like his brother- and met her regard. "Gossip is not what I'm after, Ms. Hooper. Just Sherlock's protection and knowledge that he is taking care of himself."_

_She stared at him, not at all sure what to say to that other than a 'good luck with that', which probably would not go over too well._

"_Despite what my brother says about me- and I know he speaks volumes on the subject- I only want what is best for him." He said softly, honestly. "I cannot help him if I am constantly at half court."_

"_What makes you think I can help you?" She blurted. "I won't spy for you so please don't ask."_

_He considered her, and she felt the hairs on her arms stand on end. "I want answers, Ms. Hooper. For one thing, I want to know what you slipped him to get him to sleep."_

_Shit. _

_She suddenly felt small. It was one thing for her to know about the sleep meds, but another thing entirely for Sherlock's brother to know- because if he knew, then Sherlock probably did as well. Molly peeped up at him and could almost feel…anger drifting off him. His face didn't give anything away, but she could sense the undercurrents, like how a person could tell when they were standing near live electrical wires. She did not know what so say or how to feel about this. Sherlock had been going mad; he had needed to get some rest. She was not wrong in forcing the issue, but would Mycroft see it that way? He was worried for his brother- his only brother- and if he decided she was a threat, that Sherlock was in any sort of danger, direct or not, she could quite possibly disappear from Sherlock's life- whatever that meant. Sherlock was lethal, and she was under no delusions that this brother was anything less. "He was suffering." She started, not so much in defense, but to explain to quite possibly the only other person who had Sherlock's best interests at heart. "For weeks."_

_She had his attention, all of it. It was rather intimidating to be under such invasive scrutiny, but he never interrupted her as she stumbled to explain._

"_He had been raging for so long, lashing out and being a massive git. I didn't know what to do until I came to work yesterday and he was still there…he didn't look well." She paused and sucked in a breath to keep from rambling about her feelings on the matter. "He needed help, he needed rest. He said he wouldn't sleep, but I managed to get him home, persuading him that it would be best for him in the long run." Molly continued in a steady voice. "When he was brushing his teeth, I filled a glass of water and emptied a dose of my sleeping pills into it. He drank it, something I had to convince him to do by the way."_

"_What was it that you gave him?" Mycroft asked and Molly felt obligated to show him. He had been instrumental in getting Sherlock the help he needed, if not wanted, and she could understand and appreciate his concerns about her peddling drugs into a drug users consumables. She dug into her purse and pulled out her over the counter meds. Stepping forward she handed him the small packet. _

"_They're low grade. I had needed them sometimes to help with easing me to sleep on account of some recent injuries." She mentioned lightly._

_Mycroft palmed the packet, his thoughts on the matter hidden from her. Which wasn't fair because she, apparently, could be read like an open, and boring book- Sherlock was such a _git_. "I didn't know how else to get him to sleep. He says his mind-"_

"_Practically cannibalizes itself." He finished quietly and Molly fell silent, the rumble of cars and wet tires the only sound for a few beats. "Sherlock has always been troubled by his intellectual prowess in that it throws him off balance. His mind, highly developed as it is, lacks the simple ability to, idle, as it were."_

_His face said nothing, but his eyes read pain, and Molly felt her heart squeeze because she knew this pain so well, had experienced it herself with her own brother who she had not been able to save. _

"_He cannot turn to pharmaceuticals to aid him as those will just destroy him like his other addictions have almost done." His reprimand was kind, but she still felt like she took a punch to the gut._

_Molly wanted to crawl into a hole. "I feel awful about using them, but I do not regret helping him. Sometimes even drug addicts need capsule crutches."_

"_Understandable." Mycroft soothed. "He is difficult most days, but when these episodes flare up, he is downright…"_

"_Unbearable?" Molly supplied and he shared a small, understanding smile with her._

"_He's been doing better." He shared gently. "For all my brother's claims, being alone is not something he truly enjoys."_

_Molly rubbed at her arms. "The smart ones never do." _

_Around this time, the sky opened up and it started to rain- as opposed to misting miserably- and Molly groaned. _

"_Come, Ms. Hooper." Mycroft angled his umbrella, so she was included in its dry cover. "I believe a ride to work is in order."_

_She didn't have the urge to argue as her shoes- the only part of her that the umbrella couldn't protect- started to become saturated with water. "Anything else you want to ask?" She let him lead her to the rear seat door._

"_Well, only one, and it's more personal." He said as she slipped into the plush sedan. "How one Earth did you manage to endure him for an entire evening alone?"_

_Oh…sodding hell._

* * *

GUYS! I have been fangirling since seeing _the Hobbit_ about _Star Trek: Into the Darkness_- I am a Trekkie and prefer Picard just fyi. Was I the only one sort of disappointed after seeing the preview in theatres that it wasn't _Into the Darkness_ that was going to be showing instead of _the Hobbit_? Seriously…Cumbervoiceissex is going to rock. He rocks in everything…even _Tinker Tailor_- I did not like that movie, but I loved everyone in it and spent the entire two plus hours watching a certain red head with a pair of iconic cheek bones.

Sorry, Super Bowl promo about made me pass out from BATCHVOICE OVERLOAD! Who is with me? OMG IRON MAN 3?!

* * *

Last but not least, may Chris Kyle rest well in peace. An American soldier who made a difference for his country and for his friends. Thank You.


	4. Chapter 4

AN- And so we continue. Sorry about the delay, had quilts for work to do, a licence to sell to apply for, and I hated this chapter originally. Ten minutes before posting it last week, I had a prima dona fit and tore it apart. So I beefed it up some! Yay! Sherlock! **  
**

If some of you have already figured it out,** I reply to all reviews and I am chatty**. To the reviewer who was guest that felt bad for Molly, tell me why? Let us discuss!

CreamCrop I like your name.

_*******italics is business in the past_

Mistakes irritate us. Be bothered my Sherlock Holmesies.

**How Lucky You Are**

By: Berouge

Sherlock had pulled another vanishing act- again- sometime a few weeks following his little 'episode' where he didn't sleep and drove everyone absolutely batty. This time however, she wasn't really all that concerned- maybe a teeny tiny bit- because he had told Lestrade, more or less, where he was going and that it could take a while to wrap up whatever business he was conducting. He neglected to inform her, but that really wasn't anything too unusual for him. Lestrade was undoubtedly the instigator of the case that involved both international travel and external governments. He probably dangled the file before their own personal consulting detective and Sherlock simply grabbed the reigns and ran with it, which was almost a relief to the DI- he had told her all this with a smug smile- who apparently had difficult relations with Interpol and their willingness to collaborate and with Scotland Yard. So he all but tossed Sherlock Holmes at them like a hand grenade- a sort of chuck and cover maneuver.

Probably in an ill-concealed gleeful fit of revenge for past transgressions too. Lestrade had his vindictive moments…

Rather cruel of him, as the fine folks of Interpol services had no idea and were likely blindsided by the mental juggernaut who took no prisoners and could easily out slime ball the bureau at large in their own games. Sherlock was a man of many faces and talents, including but not remotely limited to espionage, infiltration, seizure- the list was not fully explored- and all were dependent upon the caliber of prey and if the leading investigators were 'simpering dolts with a combined intellectual astuteness to barely manage the simple workings of light bulbs' …or something to that nature.

He was wordy when he was irritated by subpar humans.

Anyway, he was out hunting down a cyber-hacker turned killer that had fled to France after butchering somebody but she wasn't entirely sure at this point in time- she hadn't bothered to listen when Anderson, who had darkened her doorstep with Detective Sally Donovan, was bloviating about how _the Freak_ was going to hopefully be incarcerated overseas, all over her morgue during a police body check-in. What little she had heard convinced Molly to almost feel sorry for the hacker hatchet guy, because Sherlock was ruthless and a practiced master at belittling the keenest of criminals into raging little juvenile pukes.

He did it to the rest of them enough as it was.

Plus, she was enjoying the break- at least she started enjoying it when Lestrade had finally stopped in to tell her their eccentric friend was off invading foreign shores. She really hated admitting it, but Sherlock had been a bit much recently.

_She was conducting an autopsy on an older woman who had passed suddenly at her retirement home- which happens, but the family was adamant to make absolutely certain there had been no foul play. So far the only suspicious thing she had encountered was the grandson, who was positively obdurate about the autopsy results. He seemed intently interested on if his dear grandmother had died of natural causes or not- probably stipulated in a will somewhere stating that if she died from arsenic he wouldn't see a dime of his inheritance. This was pure uncharitable speculation she had mostly made up, but if the shoe fit the little weasel…_

"_Hey, Molly, what's going on in here?" Lestrade greeted loudly over her radio, poking his head in from one of the lab access doors. _

"_Oh, doing an unnecessary exploratory of this poor woman." She had said, after utilizing a handy elbow to bump the 'off' switch to _Lady Gaga, _and then proceeded to drop the ninety-six year old heart into her weigh scale with a meaty wet 'plop'. "What brings you here on this fine London day?"_

"_Craig in Serious Crimes said you had the Pimlico files completed. I figured I'd use the excuse to stop by for a visit." He pushed the door a little further forward, almost shielding the table and the corpse from his view- poor Lestrade didn't have an ironclad stomach for clinical guttings like this._

_Molly took pity. "Just a second. Let me just get Mrs. Rothenburge into the active store and clean-up. I'll be right out."_

_He made a noise, and quickly slipped back into the visual safety of the lab, and Molly just shook her head as she fished Mrs. Rothenburge's heart out from within the scale's bowl after recording the numbers. She would have thought a seasoned Detective Inspector would have at least seen his fair share of gross stuff and that squeamishness was a thing of the past. A surgically dismantled body couldn't possibly be any worse than one found in a gutter could it?_

_Depositing her used gloves into the bio-hazard bag at her feet and slipping out from her apron and smock, Molly quickly scrubbed her hands and dipped into her darkened lab- Bernard was doing a light sensitive experiment, so she had turned all the under-cabinet can lights on, giving the room a warmth it normally lacked with the sterile tube lights above- to find Lestrade eyeballing the fish tank, a childish look of fascination coloring his handsome face._

"_Is this thing…glowing or is that just me?" He asked, unsure._

_Molly scanned her bulbous eyed goldfish, busy making fish faces back at them. "He's glowing. You aren't imagining it."_

"_What, radioactive waste or something?" And… where would a morgue get such chemicals, Detective dear? Thinking on that, she suddenly could see exactly where he would have harvested such a suggestion._

"_No, Sherlock cultivated some sort of luminous fungus from God knows where and fed it to him." She moved to sit on one of the many stools littering the lab. "But I suppose assuming the worst is a safe option if a Holmes is, at any point, involved." She had not forgotten Mycroft's ultra-polite kidnapping- she had also chosen to neglect cluing Sherlock in on that, as he immediately appeared plagued with ulcers at the mere mention of his sibling._

_Lestrade bent down to get a closer look- as if being recently assured he wasn't going to be sprouting a sixth finger or warts with super long hairs anytime soon just from proximity alone to her tank. "This is…" He trailed off, searching for an appropriate adjective to accurately explain his feelings on Aloysius's entrancing state._

"_Weird?" He looked over at her and she shrugged. "I've been getting that a lot. He used to just glow in the dark but now he glows all the time. Bernard thought it fascinating until he found out Sherlock was the reason behind it." _

_Lestrade turned back to eye the telescope goldfish, before seeming to give up on whatever he had been thinking about with a shake of his head. "Bernard should probably save his prejudice for certain instances rather than stubbornly spreading it out. He'll live longer." He spoke as if from experience._

_Speaking of the cause of such 'certain instances'. "Have you seen Sherlock?" She asked as casually as she could- best not let the anxiety she had been repressing for a week show at this juncture. She'd been mercilessly teased since their impromptu slumber party about there being 'stuff going on' between the two of them. It was highly embarrassing. Especially when Mike Stamford started in on her along with Tom Greenely- two bookwormish guys from neighboring labs who also had to deal with Sherlock theft- because their once and future lady love was Princess Leia and they thought _her_ love life was pathetically sad._

_It was, but that didn't mean those two should be able to poke at it._

"_He's in France." Lestrade said as he used his pointer finger to wiggle at Aloysius, who jiggled back like an overexcited, glowing pug. "Following a case that had all the markers of a 9 on his Richter scale of narcissism." _

_Molly snorted. "It's sad that I know what that is."_

"_He mentioned you picked it up without much trouble. High praise coming from that asshat if you didn't already know."_

_Asshat? "How long ago did he leave?" She felt something unclench inside her as the idea of him out working- as opposed prostrate on a gurney from too much cocaine- slowly sank in. _

_Lestrade, still fixated on her goldfish, hummed in thought. "Saturday?- No, Friday morning. He had to make a special stop into HQ to belittle Anderson before hitting the airport."_

_She sighed a sigh that came from the very bottom part of her soul. How inconvenient would a text have been? Forgetful…asshat!_

"_He didn't tell you, did he?" _

_Molly met Lestrade's flat look. "Must have slipped his mind."_

_He straightened from his Cyprinidae observation, an expression on his face she couldn't really peg. "I'm sure he intended to say something, but you know how stupidly insensitive he can be." _

_She crinkled her nose at Lestrade's explanation- he was coming dangerously close to being her anomalously not-gay, gay best friend. "I'm not his keeper. He doesn't have to tell me anything. He usually doesn't."_

"_He should have. It's not right to make the people who care worry unnecessarily."_

He was right, but they had been talking about emotionally stunted Sherlock Bloody Holmes. The same guy who prowled basements and scared little kids- the prowling was needed to avoid detection, or so she had been meticulously corrected in assuming.

The child trauma was just a bonus.

_-"Why would you do that?" _

"_The little punk purposely sold me out on a previous stakeout. I demanded swift retribution."_

"_He's nine years old! You're a grown man!"_

"_There aren't age limits to life lessons, Molly."_

As frustrating as his 'slip' was, she found that him being away longer than three days was rather refreshing. As much as she adored her crazy friend- she did, she really, really, did and had no inclination to have people assume otherwise, including him- Molly found a break here and there from the flouncing dramatics invigorating. Usually, going home at night, or the random no-Sherlock days, sufficed perfectly- she could listen to her music super loud _and _sing along,watch reality TV or bad soaps on her lunch breaks, and just enjoy consuming the occasional KitKat without transparent odium via one prickly and intolerant sweet hater raining on her mini chocolate vacation. It was all fine and good and needed because Sherlock may not be her best friend, but he demanded a lot of time and attention just the same, and the wear was present if not always visible- she wanted to be able to not have to apologize for everything he did to offended parties coming through her doors be it the police, EMTs, coworkers, or heaven forbid, grieving families.

Shame truly had packed its bags in her life and left, because being harangued over something he did was fairly common place in her days. For instance, before he buggered off across the Channel, they had gone out to lunch because she was hungry- and was not stupid enough to leave him unsupervised around the new bodies that had been donated for science- and he was bored, so she had been doubly annoying in dragging him out to get a bite- which took _work_. For a man as tall and compacted with wired muscle as he was- and she knew this since The Shirt opened her eyes and she spent unnecessary amounts of energy sneakily observing him- he didn't seem interested in eating. Or at least did not adhere to any semblance of routine fuel intake.

"_Lunch time!" She sang, dropping her pen onto the unfinished report she was barely working on. Paper work was a rather large bummer aspect of her job. She had to resist doodling in the margins while writing out transfer slips for recently moved bodies._

_He ignored her, frowning into the eye piece of the trinocular microscope he had chosen for his experiment for that day. _

_Undaunted by his unenthusiastic response, Molly rustled nosily around her desk, grabbing her coat and purse. "Let's go, Sherlock! There's a taco wagon down on Hayne-"_

"_Not now, Molly." He cut across her and she huffed. So rude. _

_She bit her lip and tried to figure out how far she could push him before he bent all out of shape at her interference. "Yes now, I only have a half hour before Bernard shows up and demands assistance with the Oxford prep."_

_He must have had a sudden onset of hearing failure, because he didn't even react. Hmm…and she was being a lot more irritating today on purpose and everything._

"_Sherlock." She shifted, rapidly becoming tired of trying to not ruffle his feathers. "Either come with or I'm going to have to-"_

"_To what?" His baritone deepened and she blinked, surprised. That voice of his had the power to scare off her mental thought process too easily. She wasn't sure she liked that._

"_Er…keep nagging you." She finished weakly after a pause that had lasted a little too long and zapped the threat right out of her statement. "I'm not leaving you unsupervised near my new arrivals, Sherlock. I could lose my job if they show up to Oxford missing so much as a chunk of skin." She would too, as Bernard had caught wind of her less than ethical activities regarding the large walk-in and not keeping Sherlock strictly out of it. She tried to not feel awful considering Sherlock didn't waste anything so much as employed them beyond the capacity of which an accredited institution would deem proper. His experiments were raw, but still full of interesting results- some of which she asked if she could reference in an article she had been thinking about writing. He had seemed strangely pleased by her request, which she figured fanned his ego nicely. Not that he gave a toss about what other's thought about anything as they were habitually wrong on all fronts, or so he reminded her not two seconds after asking him._

_Still, Sherlock was a genius and just as susceptible to copious amounts of flattery as the average Joe on the street- something she had discovered years ago. Shame she couldn't 'flatter' him to accepting tacos at the moment._

_He actually looked up at her, steel blue eyes showing how unimpressed he was with her shallow plead for compliance. _

"_I'm serious this time." She added for effect. "Bernard apparently needed that head you sticky fingered and left resting near the milk." _

_Something rippled across his face but she wasn't quick enough to catch it. "His research would have aborted any beneficial data to be had from that head. We both know that."_

_Molly shuffled over to his section of the lab and snatched up his heavy coat and held it out to him. "Don't tell him that." At his triumphant smirk she tried back-tracking a few times before slumping. "Maybe something would have come from his experiment about high jacking cells with bacterial- you know what, never mind." She deflated her mediocre defense of her superior to Sherlock sees-and-knows-all- Holmes. There was a very good reason why the aging pathologist hated the big eccentric git. "Let's go. I'm hungry."_

_He opened his mouth- no doubt to shoot her down in flames- and she furrowed her brow. "Please, Sherlock." She begged openly, pushing his coat into his arm. "I can't take Bernard's lecturing today. He was particularly articulate with his displeasure last time."_

_Sherlock rolled his eyes so hard he almost looked like he was going to pass out. "Have a little respect for yourself, Molly, good Lord." But he was unfolding from the chair, so Molly could overlook his less than kosher response. He was moving- that was victory in her book._

"_Maybe if you didn't hate food, I could respect myself!" Her face crinkled comically as she tried to not show how stupid that sounded even to her ears. _

"_How does my attitude on food at all correlate with your self-esteem?" He quizzed as he accepted- finally, sweet Jesus- his overcoat._

_Molly waited for him as he slipped his long arms into his jacket. She wanted to snip at him, but her intrinsically imbedded niceness curbed her tongue- which was rather unfair considering he just let things rip out of his mouth without care. "You hate it, and that makes me sad." She said it like was truly a great tragedy in her life. Thinking of the most random edible he might consume, she smirked. "Maybe if you lick an ice cream cone, I won't be so sick at heart."_

"_I will do no such thing." He pompously popped his collar, and Molly turned away to hide her grin. He was so serious about putting down her suggestion she wanted to laugh. Granted, the thought of watching him eat an ice cream cone- sloppy, sticky, and sweet in a way no person could manage gracefully- was downright hilarious. He probably hated ice cream with enough spite to melt them just by glaring at them._

"_That's because you're boring." He looked affronted and she grinned. "That's okay, no one's perfect."_

_He snorted, and she broke and giggled back. _

She had managed to get him out the doors, but he spent that time wisely by cataloguing several descriptive and technical reasons to why she was wasting her time and energy caring about what he thought on blah, blah, blah. Man, she was really humping the dog that day and his inherent Sherlockness wasn't helping. And then he went and ticked off the taco wagon vendor and she had ended up assuming the blame for it by association and proximity to him, leading to a rather public demonstration of a verbal lynching by incensed wagon owner. Even Sherlock was marginally impressed with the man's vibrant- and educated- usage of the language to let her know that she and her companion were no longer welcome at his roving establishment.

She didn't get her taco, so Sherlock suggested going back to his snot slides- they looked green and goopy to her- and she tried not to throw her phone at his stupid smug head. He had done that on purpose- punishment for her love of food and keeping him from his business no doubt.

She was not having a good time- so when he bustled off on his case, she felt something akin to relief-after Lestrade told her he was on a case that is. Space was good and Molly wondered at the lightness that came with acknowledging that she did in fact, need a break. She insisted, time and again, that he was her friend, but there were days when she felt he barely cared if she were alive or not. Was it too much to ask that he not tromp all over her feelings? She didn't want him to magically become…well nice, because that would be weird at this point, but maybe not so sharp? They'd been lab companions- and nurse maids, but that was more one sided- for two and a half years, he wouldn't develop heart palpitations from returning a fraction of the friendliness she gave him. She wasn't asking for much here- a grunt of acknowledgement when she chattered at him would suffice. She could play the game, but he had to play back in order for her to really understand where she stood with him. He seemed at ease around her- something she noticed he was distinctly not around London's populace at large, but then again, it could be something else entirely, like he was in a science environment and was able to nerd out as hard as he pleased.

He didn't get friendship, but he understood familiarity with certain people- which was just a half assed version of friendship, but she'd never tell him that. He didn't push her away when she discussed her troubles out loud- she was almost positive he wasn't listening but his living statue impression was better than talking to her goldfish as it looked a lot less like she was mentally unstable.

She believed him to be her friend, but was she his or was she just another fixture in his life that he used? Did he seek her out for more reasons than just lab and morgue access or that one person who made sure he took his naps and ate proper meals- because he was a giant man-child? Did he find her as annoying as he led her to believe? Did he think about her in a positive light? Did he even think about her at all when he was off doing whatever it was that he did when not trying to splice flesh eating bacteria with the common cold?

She…didn't think so, but that could just be the sentiment talking.

Sherlock Holmes was a huge part of her sphere now, which probably explained why she fixated on him like she did- he was a puzzle that hid pieces on principal as opposed to someone like Greg Lestrade who always had a quick smile or a teasing story for her. She didn't have many friends - really any, at this juncture- anymore. Her sister, her mum, Lestrade, possibly Tara, and him but that was it- and only two of them did stuff regularly with her outside of work. Which was okay, but Molly wasn't so immune to the world as to believe it to be healthy. She needed friends, people she could be herself with just as much as the next person. She was no social butterfly, but she thought herself to be pretty decent with people- she kind of had to be, what with grieving families and horrified friends of the people lain out on her dissection tables, falling apart before her eyes. She just…didn't have excellent skills to propagate new friends outside of work. Going out to pubs and clubs on weekends was a lot of work- not that she had anyone asking her anymore- and the thought of sleeping in until her day was sucked dry recovering from the binge the night before didn't really appeal. In addition to her rather unfortunate social three-step disaster plan, starting new friendships were hard, since she couldn't really be herself. She couldn't discuss what she did comfortably because violent crimes and dead bodies did not inspire confidence or fertilize healthy dinner conversation. Even the purely scientific side of what she did, most folks found boring, which really bothered her since it was like a representation of…who she was.

With Sherlock- who practically pranced through crimes and around dead bodies like an excited blood hound- she was…free.

And she adored him for that. He either understood- or deduced beforehand- what she saying or trying to figure out. He was encouraging in his own way, and that resonated with her desire for someone to just get _it_. To just get _her_. To be able to talk decompensated hearts or why the bones shattered so spectacularly with another who could not only follow along, but rally back with fascinating commentary in their own right was a real treat for her.

Sherlock could be a weirdo, but she was too. Even Lestrade didn't hesitate to point that out from time to time.

It was always a welcome relief to be reminded of another who not only shared her passion for the science that dealt with the dead, but cared about her as well.

_Rubbing tiredly at her eyes, Molly gave herself a shake to reawaken her sluggish mind before resuming her observation on the tissue and blood samples that needed to be done tomorrow for DI Ryder up in Manchester, who had called DI Dimmock in need of help, who fast-tracked the third person problem to her. She should be flattered that the grouchy DI counterpart to her sweet faced Lestrade had enough confidence in her to handle a high pressure case on a spur of the moment whim- but she suspected he knew she was just going to go home, watch _Supernatural_ and do nothing of importance- the prat._

_It was late- late enough to be tomorrow- and her back and mending ribs were starting to kick up a fuss at her hunched pose over the microscope, deteriorating her mood further as the hands of the clock ticked over. Her radio was pumping out mid-nineties hits and she had the television on some science fiction channel, and every light on her floor that could be on, was on._

_She hated being there so late- she hated being by herself._

_It was the first time since…Little…that she was working past her normal hours. Her still healing ribs and fingers throbbed sharp reminders of her disaster and Molly had, in a fit of paranoia, chose Sherlock's microscope- so her back could face the safety of a wall- and wheeled a large gurney in front of the morgue access from the hall, and another by the morgue door that lead to her lab. _

_She felt trapped, but at the same time, more secure. She flat out locked the building's morgue access outside doors- screw any late night deliveries because she was not answering that door unless Lestrade called and told her it was him waiting to be let in- that's what she had texted him to do anyway. If there was a fire…she'd deal with that if it happened. _

_Tara had texted, asking if she wanted company, and Molly desperately wanted to say yes, but the receptionist had been out of work, sick as dog with the flu for the last three days, and she wasn't so selfish as to force poor Tara to tromp across the city just so she could feel better. She had to get over this aversion to working late- her job demanded she sometimes pull the graveyard shift, she could not afford to be hesitant or gun shy of her work. _

_That didn't mean she wasn't going to feel sick to her stomach about it. Her focus on the tissue samples buffered only so far…_

_Groaning loudly, just for more noise, Molly pressed a tired eye into the microscope's lens piece and ignored how the brightness of the slide light made her head ache. The samples were rather garbled and she needed to compare-_

_A loud crash had her jabbing the lens bit into her eye. Hard. Jumping from the stool that banged violently off the ground, Molly squinted with one watery eye toward the double gray doors, arm raised with a heavy medical journal aimed at the ready. _

_Sherlock stood there glaring at the rolling cart he had knocked over- one she had placed there for just such a purpose, though not with him in mind._

"_Oh!" She dropped the heavy book with a loud thud, weirdly grateful it was the difficult git rather than someone else. _

_He lifted his head, steel blue eyes sweeping the entirety of the lab, where she was standing, what she had been doing, the radio, telly, the morgue, all of it before she could even grasp the counter to catch her breath. "Interesting." _

_Wiping at her dribbling eye with a bandaged finger, Molly watched him bend to lift the cart back up. "W-what's interesting?" Her voice shuddered, body still singing with startled adrenaline. _

"_That you would willingly isolate yourself in such a fashion." He nudged the other bits left on the floor with a polished shoe, leaving them where they scattered in the fall; his good deed expired for the week presumably._

_She took offense immediately. She was nervous and paranoid, and so not in the mood to field his personal commentary with good grace. "What are you doing here?" _

_He must have heard the spite in her voice, which was surprising in its own right. "Checking on an experiment brewing in the microwave." Scanning her again, he seemed to consider something. "Why are you here?"_

_Normally he would just tell her why she was doing anything; he very rarely asked because that booked room for a conversation he neither wanted, nor was interested in having. She should be more suspicious. "Dimmock asked a favor. Due tomorrow." Her voice clipped her words. Blinking rapidly to try and clear her eye, she watched him lurk around near her doors. "How did you get in- wait, never mind." The greater question was how he managed to pick the security system as well as the door. That was a mystery for another day, however._

_He moved deliberately around the counter at a slow pace, hands clasped behind his back as she settled uneasily behind the microscope after grabbing her stool up off the ground. "So you chose to work late by yourself." He made it sound like a stupid idea. She made a face at him._

"_This needs to be done. The world doesn't stop just because I'm-" Her voice broke, and she felt a shiver run up her spine and she gave up trying to finish her original sentence. "I need to finish this." She mumbled, scooting closer to the microscope, trying to hide behind its solid bulk. It had been about a week since she had returned to work, and there were residual issues that flared up on a daily basis. This was one of them, but she was determined to not let her world forever revolve around some creep. She was…frightened, no, not so strong, nervous seemed a better choice. She was nervous about working this late, but at some point she had to pull her big girl pants up and move on. The sooner the better, right?_

_This did not mean she had to include Mr. Insensitivity in on her private challenge. She was already super self-conscious as it was._

_Sherlock tilted his head, immediately taking a seat directly across from her with a dramatic sweep of his coat. He then clapped his hands together before his mouth, watching her with his trademark intensity. What was she, a side show attraction? "You're what?" He encouraged her original thought, ignoring her attempted side step._

"_I think Bernard contaminated your experiment. He used that microwave earlier." She tossed at him, hoping he'd swan off in a flurry of a temper. _

_Her luck sucked._

"_You're scared, yet you stayed late to work. You chose to remain, even though you could have turned these samples over to Greenely and halted having to work late here for any length of time." He was just gearing up, and Molly hunched lower as his deducing became more and more penetrating and jarringly accurate. Hitting every nail center on, hammering it into the ground. He made her sound like a moron for working and she did not care for it one bit. _

_It bothered her._

_A lot._

_Why? Why?!_

_She should not be put off by this- it's what he did for fun! So what if she stayed late, alone, in a secured building? So what if she did anything by herself? She did it before, Little, and she would do it again because she had to. _

_Her pain relievers must have been messing with her emotions; it was the only thing she could blame for her haywire feelings going bonkers. Sherlock's diatribes should not be upsetting her like they were. She thought herself immune to them…sorta. It had to be the drugs._

_Right?_

_This was not good._

_She felt pin pricks behind her eyes and she didn't know why. He did stuff like this all the time, what made tonight any different. Desperate to head him off so as to keep from having useless nothings that somehow distressed and pushed her closer to crying, - something she was quite sick of doing as of lately, thank you very much- Molly snapped._

"_Sherlock!" She said loudly, ignoring the way her ribs tweaked painfully in her anxious bid to keep the injury he was inflicting hidden away. What was wrong with her? "Are you trying to make me feel awful?" _

_His eyes widened fractionally. "Decidedly not-"_

"_Then why are you here? It's late, and I'm scrambling to get this done so I can go home and-" Hopefully not burst into messy tears, "-get some rest." _

_He darkened. "You should already be at home."_

"_A dead person's justice needs-"_

"_Do not usurp those of the living." His deep voice flooded her argument over and Molly had to actually stop herself from throwing the small box of tissue slides at him- that would completely defeat the purpose of her being there after hours. "You haven't recovered, and if you think blocking yourself into a veritable cage with tables was smart then I've given you far too much credit over the years."_

_What a backhanded compliment that was covered over with a stinging observation on her intelligence. If she weren't so unreasonably upset with him, she would probably have been touched at his crappily expressed concern. If that was indeed what this was, but she had a hunch it was just him being blunt._

_And mean._

"_What do you want?" Her voice wobbled, and she cleared it. _

"_I want you to go home." He said in an even tone. "You're messing up the lab."_

_What a dick. "You go home." She paused. "And it's my lab to mess up."_

_He sighed, dropping his hands flat onto the counter. "You're childish act is not at all endearing."_

"_Oh, that's rich!" She stormed throwing her hands wide. "Sherlock Holmes is lecturing others on being childish."_

"_You're irrational, more so than usual." He said calmly, ticking her off even more. "Your medication is making you emotionally unstable."_

"_Oh you-" She bit off her sentence and pulled her hands back, intent on just ignoring him until he keeled over and died or she heaved her stool at his head, but all she managed to do was bang her acid eaten hand- that hurt terribly on good days- smartly off the corner of the counter, making her jump with a muffled shriek of pain._

_Yanking her fingers up to her chest, she curled around her hand, breathing raggedly through the shearing agony. Infuriated at herself for allowing him to make her mad enough to accidently hurt herself. Yes! She was blaming HIM!_

"_Molly?" Was he still here?!_

"_Just go away." She said in tight voice, mind overloaded with nothing but how much her hand stung and throbbed and hurt. "Leave me alone, Sherlock." Please go…_

_Her eyes swam with tears, and she clenched her teeth, trying to ride out the screaming nerves in her fingers. She tried wiggling them, and hissed as they ached anew for all her efforts. _

_She just wanted to cry. _

"_Come on," A hand slinked gently around her arm and another on her back, urging her to her feet. She went, only because it was easier then scraping up the stubbornness to fight him. _

_He steered her over to one of the lab sinks and hit the lever for cold water. Molly was mauling her lip, her face was red, and her eyes were leaking silent tears. "I'm alright, Sherlock-"_

"_Lies." His rich baritone was void of rancor however. "You didn't take your pain relievers recently."_

_She looked over at the large clock on the wall and noticed it was far later than she had thought. "Not…since six."_

_He rumbled low in his throat. "Every four to six hours as needed mean anything?"_

"_I forgot. I was busy and forgot." She tried pulling her damaged hand away, but he adjusted his grip and held onto her wrist. "Sherlock-"_

_He interrupted her again. "You need those suppressants in your system, especially considering this injury." There was an urgency in his words that had her peeping up into his face. Cold steel blue eyes were boring down at her and as she met his look, they only constricted into pale slits. "Do not forget again."_

_She blinked, and the sniffled. "It wasn't on purpose." _

_He shook his head while he used his other hand to loosen the bandage wrappings. "And in there lies the real danger. Pain confounds the mind, making clarity of focus taxing and irritability more prevalent. There's a reason why such a simple task that shouldn't have consumed more than two hours has taken you-" He also looked at the clock. "Nearly five to conclude properly."_

_Molly sagged against the counter, watching him carelessly toss the soiled bandage wrap away from them. He guided her hand under the stream of cold water, where she sucked in a startled breath at the temperature._

"_Flushing at any stage helps." He grunted. "Hold it there." He left her side for only a moment and returned with lab's impressive first aid kit. He extracted a thick tube of sterile Aloe Vera cream, cotton gauze and more bandage wrappings before shoving the thing haphazardly away from him. _

_Her hand looked terrible at this stage. Her fleshless fingers were sickening, coated in reddish yellow mucus crust that did nothing for her confidence. The water had only lightened the protective natural coating before sloughing it off under the torrent of chilly water. The ache was receding though, allowing her guilt to assume its place._

_He was studying her fingers, gradually twisting them to take in the full spectrum of damage, sharp mind assessing things on the healing probably. His touch was confident, but careful, as if he knew how to move them to avoid causing her undue pain- which would worry her later when she thought back to this moment with him. Molly watched through damp lashes, repressing the urge to babble apologies while he was helping her- he would get all twitchy and that was definitely not what she wanted. _

_When he appeared satisfied at whatever he was looking for, he shut the faucet off and used the lab's handy supply of paper towels to blot the excess water from around her acid burns, never once touching the damaged healing bits. She tagged along as he pulled her away from the sink, a little further down the counter where a cabinet light was handy, and he set to work squirting the jelly substance onto his fingers before he turned, and with the utmost care that surprised her beyond everything else that night, applied it to her burns. He was systematic in application, going over each finger with the cooling aloe cream that stopped the lingering sting. _

_And the urge to cry for a whole different reason presented itself. She may claim that her shame in regards to Sherlock Holmes was long dead and buried, God rest its weary soul, but that wasn't completely true._

_It certainly burned bright in her as he cared so unexpectedly for her wounded hand that night. _

_She had been the mean one- yes, he said some stuff that certainly didn't help her unreasonable temper, but that was more her error then his. His insults on her intelligence aside, he had said nothing that warranted her anger._

_She felt like such a git. _

_He shifted his weight to the hip closest to her, and she slumped a little more as he finished off creaming her hand. As he moved to gather the dressing, she eased forward until her forehead came to rest solidly on his arm, just below his shoulder. He hesitated for only a second before delicately pressing gauze to each one of her ruined finger pads, never once stepping away or asking her to back up. She stifled the water works, knowing that snotting on the Belstaff was a big 'no no' and he was already being strangely sweet. Pushing it was not advisable._

_It just made her feel worse._

_He rewrapped her hand, expertly getting the whole tidy ensemble tighter than even the ER doctor had managed the first time. He was securing the edges when she finally found her voice._

"_I'm sorry." She whispered as she rolled her temple into his arm, closing her eyes. "I'm sorry, Sherlock."_

_He paused in his administrations. "Don't waste your time." He returned quietly._

"_I had no right to be so terrible to you." She ignored him, because he always said stupid stuff like that._

"_Molly-"_

"_You were only looking out for me, and I- I should have appreciated it." Her voice was thick, and she swallowed._

"_Don't be ridiculous-"_

"_Friends aren't supposed to intentionally hurt friends." She reminded him. "And I'm sorry."_

"_You didn't hurt me." He said defiantly. He was oddly thick today, but that could just be the male in him._

"_Can you forgive me?"_

_He huffed. "It's like we're having two separate conversations here. This is why I don't do sentiment."_

_It was as close to a 'yes' as she felt like she was going to get. It was charming in a way. Lifting her head, she looked up into his face- an adorable look of constipation firmly situated there. She gave him a watery grin before stepping back, returning his space to him. _

_Turning back to his microscope, she sighed. She didn't have the energy to stare at flesh slides, but they still had to be done._

"_Sherlock?" She waited for his distracted hum, before peeking back up into hooded steel blue eyes. "What are the chances that I can get you to help me finish these slides before three a.m.?"_

_He cantered his head, observing her. "What's in it for me?" _

_Her smile timidly returned, happy that he was even considering assisting in the mindless job. "I have a body of a prisoner- no family, no ties- that was, unfortunately not embalmed quick enough to be of use for the medical schools. The blood pooled, you see, ruining a lot of the tissue and viable organs." She shrugged. "Bernard is out of London to Oxford all this week. As long as you don't take it from the morgue, he's yours to explore before we ship him to the crematorium Wednesday."_

_His eyes were wide as he nodded, mind already whirring into high gear at the notion of getting a whole cadaver to study unhindered. _

_She relinquished his microscope to him, - after he pressed her prescription bottle that was supposed to be in her bag, into her hands with an arched eyebrow and waited till she swallowed her allotted dosage- allowing him to do the slide viewing while she took a spot to his immediate right, recording the samples and the observations he rattled off to her. Each slide he stripped of its secrets, he also eased back, letting her see for herself what he saw- so a documented professional was still technically doing the analyzing even though he was more skilled and knowledgeable at it. Between slides, he deduced- just by the flesh samples alone- the entire case that Dimmock had been working on, answering her questions and speculations with whatever logic he possessed- and he turned out be right, like always, when she had bothered to ask Dimmock about the case outcome a few weeks later._

_With his help, she managed to wrap up her reports before three ever rolled around. As she gathered her things and shut down the lab into darkness, Sherlock waited, tossing random and interesting ideas around about what he planned to do with his new study subject. _

"_You best get some sleep, Sherlock. I don't want you nicking yourself with a contaminated tool. I think this guy had some iffy stuff floating around in him." She said in a muzzy voice as they pushed gurneys back into place and ambled out into the hall._

"_Really?!" He lit up like a Christmas tree, and she laughed at his excitement before casually throwing in appropriate suggestions on how to best extract entire intestinal tracks without ripping them and spilling their contents onto one's shoes._

_They kept this near constant stream of morgue and body dissection babble up through the cab ride to her flat- the cabbie started to get nervous as their conversations ticked into weirder and weirder things about decomposed bodies, or least that's what Sherlock had told her, much to the poor driver's nerves._

_She had forgotten how alike she and the bigheaded genius really were and as she stepped out of the cab at her building, she dipped back down and gave him one last smile. _

"_Thank you, Sherlock Holmes." At his confusion, she just giggled. "Have a lovely night!"_

They had been through a lot at this point in knowing each other, and she could see he was better than when they had first started out sharing lab tools. His hissy fits were more in general than actually meant for anyone in particular, which was a relief in its own right. Decoding the things he did took time and repetition of small moments boiled down and reassembled into normal human interaction sequences. His apologies were subtle and usually hidden in acts of common decency- she knew though. He couldn't hide them from her all seeing sentimental eye, though they sometimes took a bit of work too really sink in.

She never claimed to be expedient at identifying them.

He could still be jerk- was most of the time, but she chose to overlook a lot of his bull and bluster because he was _her_ friend. Her difficult, rude, and bossy friend. The one person she could snap and snarl at- he scoffed most of the time because Molly Hooper apparently sucked at snapping and snarling according the resident master- without batting an eye or getting bent out of shape. The one person who had seen her cry more than she was comfortable with, the one person who had to know all her fears at this point- she prattled them off at him enough to know that something probably stuck no matter how much he tried deleting it.

He encouraged her in his own way. He expected her to get the information he tossed her at speeds that made people like Tara, or Anderson, and even Lestrade roll their eyes in annoyance at his flagrant showing off.

"_What the hell did he just say?" Anderson turned to look at his superior, confused and mad about it._

_Lestrade shrugged, unbothered by one of the consulting detectives complex deductions that had come from dirt and residue found on the body. Lestrade normally didn't give a second thought to Sherlock's antics these days. "Sounds like our victim had it coming." _

_Sherlock groaned loudly, too appalled to repeat himself. "I'm ringed by fools."_

_Molly frowned at him. "Be nice, Sherlock." He was irritable tonight. _

"_They don't use their eyes!" He gestured wildly at her, coat billowing behind him as he twirled to pace. "They see but they don't observe. How can anyone, let alone London's supposed 'finest', be so blind?"_

"_Not everyone can see what the inside of their own arse looks like either, Sherlock, but we try not to compare your skills to normal blokes." Lestrade's supine delivery and unimpressed expression had Molly hurriedly swallowing a titter. Best not rile him with her mirth at Lestrade's funny. He didn't like it when she encouraged the 'fools'. It was bad enough that he was staring at her, just waiting for her to slip and laugh. Touchy tonight too. Cocking her head, she decided to intervene before Anderson made a follow up comment that would just get him behead. _

_She explained, in a pacifying tone of voice heavy with compliments to sooth Sherlock's ego, about what the he had intended for everyone to grasp at from his lofty heights. She made sure to point out what he had pointed out the first time through- she only knew to do this because she had been in Lestrade and Anderson's position more times than she could count on a dozen hands- and finished with a plainer summation then the original Sherlock had given yet still managed to include all pertinent information._

_Lestrade was eyeballing her something fierce. "Why do you know how to do that?"_

_She opened her mouth to speak before actually thinking about what he asked. Pursing her lips, she looked up at Sherlock, who was also scrutinizing her, but had an unreadable expression plastered across his face, and sensing no help- surprise surprise- from that sector, she turned back to her DI. "Uh…hard won practice?"_

_Sherlock, of course, grunted something inherently rude, but she couldn't bother to be offended._

_She had been the only person to get it._

He was complex, infuriatingly so, but she supposed that familiarity with a person straightened some things out given time.

Still, she was allowed to have moments where even her affection for him wasn't enough to keep her from wanting to wring his neck- and the last few months had not helped, what with his big brain driving him up walls. His time away would do her some good. She had things that needed attention elsewhere in her life. She needed to find a new apartment- her lease was up and she was interested in finding a place closer to work so she could walk on occasion. She wanted to take some time off for her mum's birthday in May.

She would be able to organize her morgue's inventory without fear he might lift a severed foot, or a jar of embalmed organs with her distraction. Normally, when she found out, she'd just shrug it off as a lost cause- he'd return it eventually in time for a shipment to the crematorium.

She could focus on other important things instead of him consuming her time - like how come Tara had managed to scrounge up a boyfriend and she hadn't?

Life had been so unfair at the time, she remembered it clearly.

The cute receptionist succeeded in snagging the stud muffin from Orthopedics- Wade Barrett- and she was stuck with wankers like Nicholas Hatcher popping up outside the cafeteria, trying to chat her up. Thank the lord for Sherlock's personal brand of empirical brown nosing so she had been able to give that catastrophe a wide berth.

Rather unfortunate too, because Nic really was a dish.

She had abysmal luck when it came to the dating scene- it was like a curse from the Cosmo magazine gods for not strictly following their shoddy advice- she hadn't bothered trying since before her…incident…and she honestly didn't have the urge to check her online dating profiles or blog to see if anyone had bothered to contact her. Sore ribs and acid eaten limbs tended to knock dating really low on the priority list. Plus, it's kind of hard to date when one is weary about stepping out at night with near strangers, or when Sherlock was being a massive toddler and sucking her dry of energy, making the thought of going out to dinner an undesirable prospect for an evening activity.

Given the circumstances, she probably would have continued to remain steadfastly single if Tara had not come to her some two weeks after Lestrade's visit, begging a favor.

_Saturday nights never used to be this sad. Back in school, she'd at least go out with a few other friendly girls in class to blow off steam from studying and tests, or a date here and there. Now, she sat crunching popcorn obnoxiously loud while she watched the beefcake extravaganza that was _The Avengers_. It wasn't even seven thirty yet and she had already donned her pajama pants and a ratty t-shirt, with a glass of ice cold moscato at the ready. _

_Truthfully, she wasn't really all that bothered with her night in. She worked too hard to overlook evenings where relaxing was a predominant fixture- plus she had Sunday and Monday off this week- yay!- as she worked today for Bernard so he could go bowling or something. They had discussed actually bringing another person in on the morgue work to ease the burden on her and Bernard's little operation- which was chancy with Sherlock skulking around because he'd eat a fresh hire if he could. He didn't like newbies mucking around in his playground- something she had learned the first week of knowing him as he made a few of the Medical school's students, who had come down to work on a body, cry. He was consistent like that…_

_Git._

_Sighing, she pushed work and all the headaches that wore expensive coats from her mind. It was lazy time now, and Chris Evans was wearing spandex and needed her undivided attention to help save the world._

_That's about the time her phone started to warble on the coffee table, startling her. _

_Snatching it up, she checked the caller ID before answering. _

"_Molly?" It was Tara. "What are you doing tonight?"_

_She popped a salty kernel in her mouth. "Watching movies and drinking wine as of now. What's going on?"_

_There was some muffled chatter over the line as Tara repeated what she had said to another party. "Would you like to come out? Wade and a few of his friends from out of town wanted to hit some of the clubs and I do not want to be the only girl in this caravan of meatheads. Wanna be my second?"_

_Molly perked up. It felt like ages since the last time she had gone out, and as much as she enjoyed hanging out by herself watching movies and guzzling wine- not really- human interaction, possible eye candy- if Wade was just a sampling- and just something different sounded wonderful . "Sure!" They quickly made arrangements where to meet up- Long Lane, then they'd pick up the connection that would drop them off near the hip side of the city that played host to most of the night clubs._

_Deciding on a simple ensemble of a smart but glitzy top that hung low over dark leggings and a pair of hooker red heels- she bought them on an impulse but was too chicken to couple them with anything for a day out so she usually wore them doing the dishes- Molly didn't mess with her hair outside of a comfortable pony tail. She wasn't twenty-four and trying to impress anyone. She was an adult and simply too pragmatic to bother with a curling iron for an event that would lay waste to her efforts the second she hit the dance floor. Topping off her make-up and flashy jewelry, she snapped up her 'pub trawling' clutch- that was so inaptly named because she picked it out of a bin at a thrift shop for a quarter and used it as wallet most of the time in her larger bag, it just looked the part according to her sister- and hustled out the front door._

_Before slamming it back open and rummaging around in her bag to find the bear mace that had appeared on her desk at work one morning a few weeks prior. _

_The tube was moderately busy- lots of younger people out to the races with her it seemed- and she was rather grateful when her stop finally arrived because the couple next to her had aggressively been making out almost the entirety of the trip. _

_Some people have all the luck…_

"_Molly!" She heard over the din of moving bodies and laughing people and it didn't take long to spot her friend waving wildly over by the escalators, Wade in tow. _

"_Been waiting long?" She greeted pleasantly, side stepping a moving throng of noisy girls and their sharp shoes._

_Tara dimpled from anticipation, shaking her head, dark brown ringlets bouncing. "Nope! Just got here."_

"_Is everyone seeing this right now?" Wade intoned loudly, pointing back behind Molly. "Those two are practically eating each other standing up."_

_Must be her friends from the train. "They've been at it since Stepney Green." She mentioned, not bothering to turn and look. _

"_Wow," Tara blinked. "Some people really do have all the luck."_

_Molly nodded furiously, before they broke down into uncontrollable giggles at Wade's startled look of amazement. This was fun, and she felt comfortable enough to be a little more brazen with these two. Tara was her receptionist, and she had seen Wade enough recently to not feel pressured to keep conversations from stagnating from lack of topic interest or self-consciousness. _

_Plus, Wade was a sweet heart- and even more handsome up close and in a dark blue button down with dark jeans._

_God, life was so unfair. _

_They had barely caught their breath when another group, guys this time, ambled up, calling Wade's name before a series of complicated handshakes and nicknames were tossed around like some sort of code recognition._

_Tara had stepped closer to Molly, and they bent their heads together when it looked as if this ritual needed more time then greetings usually required. "Let's see…four of them, all six's at least. What do you think?"_

_This should have been a telling clue that Tara had reasons as to why she asked her to come out, but Molly was way out of practice when it came to having friends outside of a working environment. "What's our basis of comparison?"_

"_Richard Armitage." She supplied instantaneously before crinkling her brow. "Oh, dang. That lowers them to barely fives, doesn't it?"_

_Molly felt bad for laughing. "No, no. Six seems conservative."_

"_What are you ladies talking about?" One of their subjects finally discovered they had an audience- that was at least an agreed on six in appreciative consideration- and decided to find out what was so hush hush._

"_Shoes." Tara wiggled her bright pink pumps, gesturing for Molly to display her own risqué red peep toes. "So are we going to be introduced?" She arched an imploring eyebrow at Wade, who just seemed to remember where he misplaced his manners._

"_Er, these are the guys- Ben, Will, Raph, and Doughnuts." He waved his hand in a grand gesture, each identified man either nodding or waving on introduction. Except for the last guy, who groaned loudly._

"_Joe. The name is actually Joe Doognerts." He corrected, suffering. _

"_Right," Wade acquiesced magnanimously, "Joe Doughnuts."_

_Doughnuts rolled his eyes. "You're such a cock."_

"_You're cute when you're grumpy." Wade smirked before stepping back next to Tara. "May I introduce you gentlemen, to my girl Tara, and her friend Molly." Molly smiled nervously as they each sized her up- reminding her why the label game actually wasn't as fun on the labelee side of the fence._

"_Now if we're all finished, we have a train to catch."_

If pushed to recall that evening today, Molly would have been hard pressed- it was relatively unremarkable and had been a mess at its conclusion, like so many other nights out. But at the time, and a good period following, she would have had no trouble pinpointing the exact moment the night started to tank- this was after thorough study and a rehashing of the events that blew a hole in her little fantasy of maybe catching one of the guy's attention.

She did…just not the way she had been hoping.

Little did she know at the time, it was a sure fire approach to unwittingly enrage Sherlock Holmes.

And not in a good way.

"_Wait," Ben, the obnoxious one, sat forward as the train sped along to the next station. "You work with dead bodies? As in murdered people and shit?"_

_She tried not to be smarmy as she answered. This one had a strong touch of arsehole about him. "Yes and sometimes. I'm a pathologist. I utilize tells left on the deceased to circumvent visual beliefs that are contrary of the truth." She plumped up the diction in her speech when she felt the need to subconsciously cow ol' Benny boy. Best let him know they weren't even in the same league because so far, he was the only taker for her attention._

_Rats._

"_But, like, dead bodies?" _

"_Yes, dead people. I work with the dead." She reiterated as patiently as she could. Sometimes, the thought of just being unconscionably rude- like a certain consulting detective of her acquaintance- was awfully tempting._

_Ben reclined in his seat, draping his arms over the back as he observed her with gleaming fascination. "Kinda kinky. Bet you see a lot of naked people."_

_Molly didn't know what to think about that aside from feeling that even the word 'kinky' had no room in a morgue. She reverted to a standby smile- completely out of her depth on handling someone as forward and stupid as this Ben happened to be. Glancing quickly to her side, she noted Tara and Wade engaged in an animated conversation with Doughnuts, and realized that until the train stopped, or their conversation cycled through, she was trapped in this difficult discussion with a purebred dumbass. _

_She felt guilty at the sudden wish to be back home on her couch, in her brightly lit apartment with the telly on to one of her favorite trash channels and her chilled glass of wine._

_Trying to purge the idea of her 'doing stuff' at work from her mind- Ben had not shut up about his barefaced sexual fantasies and she cringed, hard, at the idea of it _all_- Molly interrupted him. "I'm sorry, what did you say you did?"_

_Ben smirked. "I'm a cop down at New Scotland Yard."_

_She felt a jolt because it was shocking that Ben was on the force- she bet money he worked in Traffic- and a rush of warmth as her thoughts turned toward her dear DI- who she would have been overjoyed to have with her at that moment. "You know Detective Inspector Lestrade, then?"_

"_Eh, he's kind of a dweeb." He brushed off in an uncaring I'm-so-cool sort of shrug. Seriously? Did this look like high school, Ben the Cop?_

_Molly glared. "He's a friend of mine, and a brilliant addition to the Yard." _

_Ben had the decency- for around three seconds- to look ashamed of himself, before he galloped energetically off into a story she neither asked for nor cared to listen too about his days in the NSY Training Program and the crazy scumbag things he and his friends got up to._

_Ugh, this was going to be a long night._

_Their stop did not come quick enough for her and as the doors opened, she had to resist bolting for the connector that would take her back home- away from Ben, who seemed intent on being her 'friend'. These guys obviously upheld some sort of moral bro-code- must have been a contract signing and witnessing with all those handshakes- because Raph and Will seemed to keep their distance, allowing their tool friend to play the field in false hope._

_Tara turned to look back at her with eyes sparkling with excitement, and Molly almost felt bad for her beseeching 'help me' look that had her friend disengaging from her group to swoop back to the rescue. With Tara next to her, Ben wasn't able to work his magic, granting Molly the space she needed to refortify her walls of disinterest and pray that she could channel Sherlock and tell him to buzz off without feeling like a big git. _

_She was too damn nice. _

_Tara kept Ben at bay, bless her, sensing Molly was not falling for his spiel. _

"_You okay?" The dark brunette whispered when Will and Ben started bickering loudly over which club made better White Russians, _Heaven_ or _Union Underground.

Heaven_ was a world famous gay bar for the record, yet this was not questioned as the guys continued their debate. It was too much to hope that Ben was the gay man in this clique…and not Will. "Yeah, I'm fine." Molly lied._

"_Sherlock- Heaven help me- is right. You're a terrible fibber." She called her on it._

_Molly bit her lip. "I'm sorry, but Ben is…" She tapered off, not wanting to offend Tara by saying something against a member of Wade's wolf pack._

_Tara cocked a brow. "He sounded like an utter prick. I had not anticipated that."_

_She grimaced, still feeling bad about not liking him for the sake of the group dynamic. _

"_I know this is not how you imagined your night going," Her friend said, linking her arm through Molly's in a comforting show of solidarity. "Let me buy you a drink, and if the night is still too much," She meant if Ben was becoming a nuisance, "then you and I will book it back to my place for wine and movies."_

_That got her attention. "But Wade-"_

"_He's a big boy." Tara smiled bumping her shoulder. "You're my date, and guest, tonight."_

_They ended up at _Union Underground_, an old warehouse converted into an ultra-modern club that just brushed TRYING TOO HARD with the backlit frosted glass walls and tables. Snagging a long skinny rectangular counter that seemed more like a human trough for spilled drinks then a chic table, she and Tara braved the thrumming bar as the guys tried to determine if age affected the recovery rate when it came to starting a night off with double shots of hard booze._

_Molly knew she was going to be facing a serious question before she even finished her first Manhattan, in that did she continue her revelry with Tara, or stop and spend the night keeping wary eyes on Ben- who had attempted at least twice since stepping through the doors to put his hand on her waist, and once around her shoulders. Her problem wasn't knowing when to quit, it was how much of a light weight she was._

_Two beers and she was off with the fairies. _

_She pondered and considered her choice all through her martini and by the time she was popping the cherry into her mouth, another drink was placed before her and Tara- compliments of Will and Raph, who were apparently an item- well that answered one question- and appreciated their appreciation for the classic drink or something to that metaphorical effect. Gay people had their celebratory quirks too._

_Shots- too many- of some sort followed next, and before she knew it, she and Tara were drug out to the dance floor with an overexcited Wade and Will- who adored the _Pussycat Dolls_- and were soon lost in the hypnotic twirling of lights and throbbing bass._

_She was beyond gone at this point, barely functioning as she stumbled through a dance jam with Ben- who was far too close, grinding up against her side and making her want to flee for the hills, even to her alcohol muddled mind- before she broke for the sidelines claiming the readily and believable excuse of needing to use the ladies. High heels had proven to be a poor choice in footwear as she stumbled, painfully tweaking an ankle as she maneuvered toward the bathrooms located down a shady looking hallway. Hand braced against the brick walls, Molly carefully wobbled down the corridor, muttering to herself and staring openly at couples who felt copulating in semi-public corners was a good idea, even going so far as to encourage one pair of them as they reached their nirvana a little too enthusiastically._

_Humming, because she was too plastered to be anything but cheerful, Molly discovered that the ladies was currently out of order- a big problem._

_Swaying as she stared at the 'Out of Order' sign, mind taking its time to arrive at the same destination as her eyes, Molly puckered her lips. "Well this is inconvenient." _

"_There's a loo upstairs, Sweetcheeks." Someone mentioned as they brushed past her- one of the vocal fornicators she identified- and she turned to find a small flight of stairs that led up to the DJ's nest. Okay, she could do that. Going to the bathroom was paramount. Stairs would not sway her from her mission of bladder relief. Turns out, gravity had some lessons to still teach those who were foolish enough to don heels at a club, but she would worry about those later. She used the wall as a long crutch, basically planting one shoulder and sliding up to keep from tumbling backwards, and as she managed to hit the top stair and take in the dark, dark walkway, Molly felt trepidation breech the haze of booze clouding her better judgment._

_Then the urge to pee overcame everything and she located the bathroom- which actually happened to be another men's room, but the startled guy at the urinal just seemed to accept her intrusion with good humored grace a she hobbled, humming still, into the stall._

_By the time she exited the restroom- sufficiently relieved- she felt a little less pressured and not quite so drunk and a little more aware of her surroundings. Not by much, but enough to notice the shadowy figure crouched in front of a locked door further down the hallway opposite of the stairs. _

_Her feet were moving before the rest of her caught up to the fact that it was dark and creepy in the cramped corridor and that could be anybody- from Ted Bundy to Elton John- and that she needed to get back to Tara and the crew. _

_Except she'd know that Belstaff anywhere. "Sh'lock why must you pick all the locks?" She said pleasantly, and he jerked, twisting around so fast he had to plant a few fingers on the ground to keep from sitting on it. Steel blue eyes narrowed into slits as he recognized her._

"_What are you doing here?" His voice was low, its sensuous warmth making her shiver as she watched him push quickly to his feet._ _"And why are you up here alone?"_

"_Up here? Loo." She pointed behind her a little too quickly and narrowly avoided clipping the wall with her fingers. Shifting her weight, she stepped back to keep from hitting anything, and felt her balance sway out of her control completely. She would have fallen over if a strong hand hadn't wrapped itself around her bicep, rooting her in place. "Oooh, good job!" she praised, smiling up at him._

"_How much have you had to drink?" He asked slowly as he pulled her gently over to the door he had been fiddling with. _

"_Mmm." She slumped up against the wall. "More than enough. Shoulda stopped after the second Manhattan, but Ben is grabby and the drinks delicious, so I indulged." She rambled out, rubbing at her nose._

_He looked at her sharply. "Grabby?" _

_She fluttered her eyes as her head dipped drunkenly, watching his hands. "You're working? It's too nighttime for that."_

"_Focus, Molly." He snapped, and she jumped. "Who is Ben?"_

"_Wade's frien'. He's a cop and was rude about Lestrade. I don't like him." She slurred. Her head was swimming and she started to slide down the wall watching him watch her the entire way. "Nope, nope."_

_Sherlock just sighed, shaking his head while he jiggled the door handle until it popped open. "Stay put." He pointed at her, voice low. "I won't be but a minute." Then he slipped inside shutting the door until just a thin crack remained. She puffed her cheeks as her rear-end finally made contact with the ground. Well he seemed moody._

_Well…moodier._

_She should get back to Tara and her friends; she would maybe start to wonder if Molly never returned, possibly fearing she was overcome in the tunnel of love on the way to the restrooms. She leaned forward to see what Sherlock was doing, but it was too dark- and the door was shut. Groaning, she tried to stand, but kept tipping over because her shoes had tiny surface to air ratios- more like rocking side to side in hopes of magically appearing on her feet, difficult footwear notwithstanding. Finally, she just gave up the ghost and kicked her shoes off, noticing immediately when her bare feet touched the sticky floor._

"_Oh, gross." Wiggling her toes in morbid fascination on the tacky textured wood, Molly groped around until she managed to snag another door handle that she used to help pull her plastered body up. _

"_What are you doing back here?" A voice barked at her._

_Startled, her grip slipped and she slammed into the wall as her equilibrium rolled back, unbalancing her already precarious stance. She squinted up to see a thin man charging right toward her, his mohawk distinct against the brighter stairwell while chains clinked riotously on his hips with every step he took. He looked like the 80's…_

"_Bathroom?" She cocked her head, finally managing to stand straight._

_He was merely a foot away- much too close her sluggish mind alerted her- when he came to a stop. "There ain't a whore's loo up here. Get goin' before I throw you out."_

_Molly reared back, more at the venom in his voice then what he had said. "Who are you calling a whore, whore?" Insults needed work, and she was on vacation at the moment. She stooped unsteadily to collect her shoes, however, before pushing her way past him, intent on stumbling away as primly as allowable. _

_She only made it two assured steps before she veered into the wall again._

_He snickered, amused with her apparently, but she just scrunched her face at him. "What is this, recess? Get a move on it, pretty mama." He flapped his arms at her, shooing her quickly back toward the stairs._

"_And you're hair looks funny!" She said waspishly before stumbling near the top of the stairs and slapping a hand against the wall to keep from tumbling head first down to the next floor. "Oh, my."_

"_Oh, come on! Get on with it already." Her escort barked, prodding her shoulder with a distant poke. He had apparently no tolerance for drunks. Inconsiderate peacock. He was about to say something else when suddenly Sherlock appeared, looming over both of them- extracting a cheer from her and a nervous look from him._

"_I told you to stay put while I used the facilities." He lectured, bodily edging the mohawk guy back several steps with just one his mean looks he had cultivated so carefully on the folks at work when they tried to get him to not do something. Sherlock was an impressive package most of the time, but in that small space just above the stairs, his menacing presence was particularly effective. He just looked like someone a person would rather avoid a confrontation with in that coat of his. He probably practiced intimidating people in the mirror at home while he brushed his teeth._

_She believed it. _

"_My bad." She garbled out, reverting to her teenaged years, as she tried slinking down the steps away from him. Man, she was a little too drunk for this uneven floor business, but a steadying arm around her waist and a guiding grip on her hand kept her from grinding along the rough brick in her search for support. "Sh'ock is here! Bye!" She waved to the punk still riveted at the top of the stairs. _

"_Nice distraction." He mentioned softly into her ear, "Just enough time to find the proper evidence in the dark, thanks to you." He all but lifted her down the last three steps to the floor when her feet kept clinging to the last stair every time she took a step. "Put your shoes on."_

"_I can't walk in them." The haze of alcohol lifted briefly in that moment of clarity, before she looked up into his face and smiled ecstatically, mind already moving on to other areas of importance. "I'm happy you're here!" _

"_Yes, yes. Heels on." He impatiently took them from her limp grasp and dropped them unceremoniously on the ground at her feet. "This floor is a cesspit. One which you will regret traversing without a barrier when you are sober." It took a second to dissect what he said, before she dropped her eyes to her shoes. She really had to concentrate; ignoring his aggravated sighs and twitches as she practically molested his arm and chest for support. Secretly, she may have taken advantage of him a little, but Sherlock was a rather solid chap under all that coat and purple button down, and deserved to be sneakily appreciated. He would probably curdle into a temper if he knew she entertained such thoughts about him. Or that pinch on his bicep was a test to see what sort of muscle was to be had there…_

_Selfish git._

_Cute, hooker heels finally on, she hobbled unsteadily forward, "Maybe these shoes were a poor choice."_

"_Clearly." His barely concealed contempt had her pulling away from him on a latent self-preservation instinct. Perhaps he did know she had thoughts about him? He had a rather irksome sixth sense when it came to her thoughts, like he could read her mind just by looking at her. Then again, sometimes he just peeled away situations and arrived at the truth at the expense of her feelings. Like a bull in a china shop…_

_She couldn't tell which time it was now, but she didn't welcome being verbally assaulted. Not when she was too inebriated, too defenseless, to handle him and his douche missiles. _

_Despite the vodka pumping through her veins, she could hear his agitation loud and clear. It was a bit of a downer to be honest, but as she made to part from him, his hand only tightened around her arm. "I'll get out of your way." Her words bled into each other, but judging by the way he closed his eyes as if in deep pain, she knew he understood. _

"_You're compromised in this condition." He finally flung out, and she felt extremely confused. One, by his language because she was bombed big time, and two because…She turned her head to look out over the moving mass of people having a good time and wondered if he understood what this establishment was built for exactly, "Oh, but that was the point."_

"_What?" His voice was close to her ear as the music selection merged into a heavier techno and people started shrieking as the music pumped over the crowd, drowning all chances at conversation beyond shouting at one another._

"_I gotta go." She turned back to him, momentarily hypnotized as the erratic lights moved and bounced over his face, lighting up his pale eyes and cheek bones for fleeting seconds. "Tara'sss waitin'."_

_His mouth tightened as he had to stoop to hear her- the prostitute peep toes certainly helped, but she was still almost a head shorter than he was- "Lead the way." He mouthed with a jerk of his chin, and she felt every single one of those ounces of liquor at once. He wanted to come with?_

_Then she beamed at him, happy despite how unhappy he looked to be stuck in the club holding her up so she didn't face plant at his feet. She could remember wishing Lestrade had been around earlier, but this was almost better. Sherlock was…he was familiar and a welcoming figure for her, regardless of how he scowled suspiciously at every single person gyrating close to them- that could be because he hated normal modes of fun that didn't involve fire or thinking at some critical point. She wasn't alone when he was near, and she definitely did not know what to do with that feeling because it simply did not conflate with the standard emotion set he brought out in…well, everybody. But he did for her, and that was more than enough. She scooted forward on iffy feet, slinking around dancing couples and their sharp elbows, one of his large hands clasped firmly in her own as she made her way back to their stupid little rectangle table that had indeed caught nothing but spilled beer and whiskey all night. Raph and Will were there, heads bent together as they used the transparent privacy of a busy club to have a moment between them. It was Will who noticed her, lifting his head and doing a double take- must have seen who she was dragging along behind her._

"_Molly, where have you been?" Raph mouthed eyes on her. "Tara's been going spare." _

_She let Sherlock go the second she got close enough- because he probably was sick of making sure she didn't hurt herself- reaching for Will, who offered his own steadying hand. "I know, but I had to use the ladies room." She all but pressed her lips into his temple so he could hear her. _

_Will stared at her for a second before looking over her head to the man she had brought with her. "And who is this?" He was intrigued. _

_She knew the feeling well._

_Working to turn around and feeling far drunker than when she first had stepped away from the dance floor, she let her eyes rake over her friend. Sherlock looked supremely annoyed as he watched them, but she could see the strain in his neck and jaw from clenching his teeth, the rigidness of his back. The club's overstimulation must be unbearable for him, a guy that saw everything with no 'off' switch. "Tha's Sh'lock." She said finally waving a hand at him, and he lifted a brow at her. "He's mine from work."_

_Raph twisted a smile, and stood. "Sherlock Holmes?"_

_Sherlock inclined his head, but only slightly. "You know him too?" Molly grinned, before turning to reach for the reluctant consulting detective, who stepped forward ready to catch her sloshed butt if the need arose. "You are popular everywhere!" She said to him._

"_Molly." Will, said, laughing. "Wade's mentioned him on occasion because of Tara."_

"_Oh." She blinked, adjusting her grip on Will so as to lean against him, and he shifted so she'd be more comfortable- she would never had snuggled up to him like this after only knowing him a few hours, but drinking tended to boot social conventions like personal space out the door without a second thought. He didn't seem to mind at least. "Tara doesn't always see though." She said loudly at them, snagging Sherlock's attention, leading him to doing that thing where he stares right into her soul- bloody Holmes brothers and their x-ray super powers. _

_Raph and Will exchanged a look. "See?"_

"_Molly," Sherlock finally spoke, "Has had a bit much tonight." And she nodded in agreement._

"_Molly! There you are! I had thought you left!" Tara materialized at her shoulder, a vivid colored drink at home in her hand. "Where did you go?" She shouted to be heard, before her eyes wandered to the tall figured at the edge of their group. "Sherlock's here too?"_

"_He made me put my shoes back on." Molly whined, and Will snorted as she moved to stand on her own, hands gripping the stupid glowing table._

"_Dear, you may want to get a STD scan sometime this week." Raph practically had to yell as _Lady Gaga _boomed overhead._

_She wrinkled her nose, before turning to Tara. "Can I have a sip?" Because those colors were mesmerizing and she was thirsty. Tara handed over her psychedelic drink without hesitating, turning to greet Wade, Doughnuts and Ben who just came from the dance floor. Molly sucked at the straw as she rotated to look back at Sherlock- who was now frowning at her something fierce only a foot away._

_What a fun suck._

_Stepping closer, he brought his lips down to her ear and she had to keep from squirming as her insides shuddered from his proximity. What was wrong with her? It was just Sherlock._

_He smelled good._

"_You're drunk, Molly. Perhaps now would be a good time to stop." She could feel the rich timbre of his voice as it screwed with her attention. He was right, but that didn't mean she wanted to relinquish the nice buzz she had going._

_It had been so long since she was so out of it to not really think about anything more than twirling lights and steel blue eyes._

_Wait, what?_

"_I'll stop after this last nip." She spoke into his ear, and then promptly guzzled the whole drink- almost the entire glass- in one go, watching his eyes harden at her blatant blow off. He obviously wasn't used to her disobeying him- he needed a reality check._

_Ben chose this exact moment to reinsert himself in her life, and she forgot to cringe as he slipped a too casual hand around her waist, tugging her away from a pissed Sherlock with a smug. "She's mine, pal. Buzz off."_

_Molly remembered as she felt his lips brush too close to her mouth that she didn't like this man, and jerked back, flinching as he pulled her closer. Eyes flying back to Sherlock, who looked absolutely murderous next to a concerned Wade who was saying something to him, hand latched solidly into his shoulder and jacket, holding him back._

_It was Raph that came to her rescue, after she looked elsewhere for help. Bless him. Bless his intuition that was as good as hers because gay men were a God send in awkward situations- plus they had the muscle to make a difference. "Sorry, Ben, Tara and I need Molly for a second. You know, gossip."_

_She sagged into him, heart racing, mind spinning, or was that the room? "Oh, God…" She lurched forward, hands out in front as she looked for something to hold on to. That last drink had been a terrible mistake._

_She was going to pay for it. She could feel the rebellion in her gut starting._

_Molly leaned forward, because her body just did things for no reason as the alcohol in her system inflamed the drunk in her. Will, or Raph, or Tara, adjusted their grip to a full on hold as she teetered too far out as the whole club leaned to the left. Sherlock must have traded them at some point because when she looked back up after a small eternity of watching the laser lights and dots on the dark floor bounce in and out of her vision, it was his pale eyes, high cheek bones and dark hair that she saw. "Hullooo." She could barely speak._

_She heard and felt his voice resonate in her skull, but not what he said, and the next thing she was aware of, they were maneuvering back through the throngs of club goers dancing, drinking, and making-out. _

_Some people had all the luck…_

_And around that point, her poor luck all but self-imploded as she boarded the dreaded vomit rocket. Right outside the club in the gutter- getting sick on her cute shoes! NO!- and feeling like a fool the entire time. "'M too old f'r dis." She managed thickly._

"_You don't listen!" She remembered hearing someone growl at her, and a chance glance at the reflection off a car window showed her his thunderous face as he held her hair back. "You don't _fucking_ listen!"_

_The only time in her entire history with him, he swore, and she was too drunk to know it happened. Talk about missed milestones._

_He was mad. Positively ballistic in his fury he let her have it- good thing she was too smashed to understand what was happening- Tara told her the next day over the phone in a hushed voice, somehow disturbed by what she saw- as she heaved and heaved and heaved on some poor person's tires- and her lovely red heels. _

_It was probably a good thing too, because Sherlock was scary in a true temper- not just a dramatic hissy fit- because he was calculating and cold and absolutely deadly. He changed in Tara's eyes that night. _

_Molly just wished she had bothered to eat something other than popcorn- revisiting it was horrendous. She'd deal with his beef later, she had more important things to contend with, like not being sick on herself, or in the cab- that she found herself tucked away in at some point- or the steps to her flat._

_He was snapping in her ears again when she finally passed out._

She had seen flashes of it from time to time back then. Little flickers of what was the tip of a truly colossal iceberg. As time wore on, she would get to experience more and more of it and it wasn't as thrilling as a helpless romantic like herself would have anticipated. Sherlock was both possessive and protective- which for the sake of common knowledge, does not help in the dating circuit. He had hauled her home that night, brushing Tara's offer of assistance off almost cruelly because he, in true Sherlock fashion, partially blamed her for Molly's trashed state.

Which was stupid. Nobody made her drink Tara's last absinth laden 'Nitty Gritty' in one fell swoop. Not that he didn't level a healthy dose of blame on her shoulders as well- which was her fault for her being drunk in the first place- no, he fairly breathed fire the next morning when she had stumbled from her bed in a mad rush to find her toilet so she could flush her head as spasms rocked her core while she barfed her soul up.

She had already gotten chunks of sick on the ends of her hair by the time she felt someone carefully pull them away from the danger zone, and in the misery and sour smelling bowl of the bog, Molly heard him frigidly inform her of every 'imbecilic decision' she had made the night previous, which started with wandering around in a strange and potentially dangerous club, disorientated, drunk and alone, and ending with her not even having her own keys present on her person- because she had forgotten them on the coffee table next to her empty wine glass- to get back home safely and being too intoxicated to even sleep without supervision- he stayed over and was mad about it- for a real concern of choking to death on her own vomit.

She thought she heard Ben's name shot through with condescending remarks- which she whole heartedly agreed with- as well as her choice of activities in poor foot wear.

He went on and on, in the same cold, monotone voice that let her know exactly how much she buggered up last night. Listing reason after reason why she was a fool, overall doing a bloody fantastic job of making her feel every inch the idiot he painted her as.

And she let him have his say, let him blisteringly scoldi her for God knew how long as she wilted against the blessedly cool enamel of the tub. Her head swam in the throes of a pounding headache and severe thirst and his low baritone's white noise. She cracked her eye open when he handed her a cool, wet rag to press to her mouth, squinting in pain against the daylight flooding her too white bathroom.

His eyes were as cold as the words coming from him, and she sighed when he had, in a completely uncharacteristic move in the middle of his tirade, helped to gently pile her long hair on top of her head to keep from having it drag in her face or in the toilet the next time she had to throw up- which was only a matter of minutes away.

When he reached past her, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows to twist the knob on her shower, glaring at her every time he met her eyes, she shifted until her throbbing forehead bumped against the meat of his shoulder.

He was grumbling something at her, and she did not know what possessed her to say it. Had she been more aware of herself, she would have worded it differently to protect him.

_The shower quickly started to fog the small bathroom, its steady rhythm of cascading water almost soothing to her shot nerves and overtaxed senses. _

_He was still grouching at her, not having pushed her away from using him as a leaning post as she waited for the next ride on the vomit rocket- which was coming and fast. _

"_-Idiotic attempt at socializing with common refuse-" He kept up a steady litany, the vibrations of his voice shuddering through her aching temple, and Molly resisted the urge to moan in pain._

"_You brought it on yourself." He snipped tightly at her- apparently she hadn't resisted that much._

_Leaning harder into his solid form, she sighed, "I know," She rasped._

_He grunted as he stuck his hand into the shower spray to check the temperature. "So…stupid."_

"…_it's okay, Sherlock." She all but whispered around the pounding in her head and heart. She felt awful._

_She could feel the urge rising to toss more cookies into the toilet but when she shifted to move from him, he turned his head and frowned down at her. Steel blues boring into her crown. "Enlighten me." He said it in that sarcastic 'this should be good' tone of voice._

"_It's terrible, almost painful, watching someone you care about, knowingly destroying themselves before your very eyes."_

* * *

__AN- That was a hungover low blow Molly Hooper! What did you guys think?

Again, sorry for the wait!


	5. Chapter 5

AN- 44 pages of b.s. This chapter is...what it is. Builds on stuff. and things.

You guys make me blush because I feel this screwball story is redunkulous and it amazes me that folks enjoy it so much. So this one is for you, dear reader, sorry for the wait. Sherlock and I don't do routines.

_Italics**** past stuff_

There are probably so many mistakes but I was loosing my mind going over it literally the 20th time. Just think of them as love pinches.

**How Lucky You Are**

By: Berouge

* * *

The day the news broke, Molly had no idea, no warning, no chance to prepare for the theatrics and humiliation that were soon to follow. She was, once again, blindsided by a reality that was laced with her own demons- and with pictures to boot- and had been completely mortified because she was, _once again,_ stripped of her choice and decision on the matter- which should have never happened to begin with. She struggled to look at it differently, to try and understand why people would want to see those photos and the morbid curiosity they evoked. Even today, years later, she still kept that issue of the _Sun_, hidden somewhere in her closet, buried so deep and dark that only a thorough purging and a desire to abuse herself could excavate it from its place in history.

Boris Little was going to trial, and because of the horrific state of his acid eaten visage - something she refused to let guilt her, the bastard, - being plastered up everywhere right alongside her own photo- this, this right here is what had her a good bit angry- it had naturally became a media circus on a national level, being covered by every major news network and media outlet in the country. It was bad enough that the eyes of the curious public turned toward her, and after the first couple days of the trial she had endured it, head held high as she road to work on the Tube every morning through the remaining duration of the trial. It was worse when people- overzealous story hunters- began nagging at her heels as she ran her errands to the store or bank after work, but she slapped a politely disinterested expression on her face and ignored their jeers as flashbulbs marked her location in every isle, on every corner.

However, nothing, absolutely not a damn thing, could have compared to that first morning- the one where no one, not one damn person that may have had even the slightest inkling that her life was about to combust into a freak show, had bothered to clue her in. Not stupid Anderson- though why he would made her question her mental state after entertaining the idea- not Greg Lestrade, not even Sherlock Holmes.

_Molly dipped into the lively little coffee shoppe to order a disgustingly sweet concoction of hazelnut, caramel and cream to go. Parker, one of the college kids that had been working the counter for as long as she had been stopping in, grinned like fool when he saw here. "Molly! Good Mornin' sunshine!"_

_Eyes sparkling at seeing a friendly face, Molly giggled. "Good morning, Parker! How are you today?"_

"_Positively wretched." He winked as he started reaching for the largest sized cup they carried. "What cavity inducing brew would you like today?"_

_She ordered a variation on her usual- as usual as it came at least, she hadn't been in here for a stretch- and then spent the time it was being made snooping into Parker's love life, reacquainting herself with his once and future girlfriend- that he had been pinning after for nearly six years and yet to ever ask her out._

"_Girls don't find voyeurs particularly appealing, Parker." She shook her head as he concluded a story about his last encounter with his lady love._

"_I prefer long distance appreciator." Parker carefully corrected, making her laugh._

"_Creepy guys don't finish at all." She wagged her finger at him, as she accepted her drink._

_He wrinkled his nose. "Appreciator, Molly. Appreciator." _

_She managed a decent goodbye, laughing too hard to really be coherent as she exited the coffee house, and turned to make her way to the Tube station to catch her ride to work. Sipping at her drink and all but melting with the steam, Molly moseyed her way down the street, enjoying the brief moment of lightness before work crushed her under its oppressive desire to keep her from seeing the sun for the next eight to twelve hours. She loved her job, but as the warm- for London- weather rolled in with the summer, she wanted to spend as many nice days outside as possible._

_Stepping up to the corner to cross Wimbley and make it to her frequently used Tube station, she had to wait for the light. Taking a sip of coffee, she just managed to hear the clicking of a shutter over the roaring traffic, and turned blinking to look into a large black lens positioned a scant foot from her nose._

_The man behind the camera rapidly fired off six more shots before a startled Molly finally caught up with the rest of class. "What are you doing?" _

"_You're, Molly Hooper." He said as if she didn't know, dropping his camera from his face a little for her to catch a narrow face with sandy colored hair. _

_When nothing more was forth coming, Molly cocked her head. "…yes I am. Why are you taking pictures of me is what I wanted to know. And how do you know my name?"_

_This was strange. She didn't like it._

"_You're the chick that melted that one bloke's face." He shrugged, lifting the camera and clicking several more times, forcing Molly to curl in on herself to try and escape the intrusion._

"_Ex-excuse me!" She stepped back, hand raised to block the eye of the camera. "What does that have to do with you taking my picture? Who are you- would you stop that!" She snapped finally as the obnoxious clacking only picked up speed at her questions gleamed just shy of desperate._

"_Can't. These will fetch a fair price." He didn't even hesitate as he followed her retreat as she backed up. _

_The light finally turned and Molly wasted no time hustling across the street; her fan stalking her the entire way. "Stop following me!" She whipped back around to bark at him._

"_How do you feel about what's happening right now?" He shouted at her, drawing the attention of everyone on the side walk. _

_She was starting to feel like a zoo attraction with the amount of curious looks she kept getting. "Leave me alone, creep!" She hollered. _

"_Molly Hooper, everyone!" He bellowed obstreperously as she darted down the station steps, feeling hunted the entire way until she was tucked away on the train speeding into the heart of London. What the heck was that? Face ashen, and heart pounding, Molly kept her eyes carefully trained on her scuffed-up tennis shoes- she accidently had ripped a stomach open when she was weighing it yesterday, splattering her work shoes with three week old bile and decayed flesh- and tried to not draw anyone's attention to her. She had to get to the lab; she needed to get to her computer. She needed to know what the hell was going on with Boris Little! Nobody had said anything. She just saw Lestrade two days ago, and he hadn't mentioned anything about the pending trial. He would have told her if something important was going on. _

_Right?_

_He would have._

_The train ride was over a lot sooner then she anticipated, mind racing in useless circles as she dealt with more questions than actual answers. That was until she slinked off the train, and saw her face- her beaten, bloodied, unconscious face- slapped up all over the place._

"_What the hell?" She breathed, stunned, dropping her still hot coffee from lifeless fingers._

_People were forced to move around her rooted position, and the sticky spill at her feet, right in front of the train doors, as it took a long time for her to comprehend what she was actually seeing. The news stand, the one that sold all sorts of magazines and newspapers to commuters, the same stand she had passed a zillion times on her way to and from work, had her gory face next to Little's destroyed one on every cover._

_It was a terrible grouping and as she stared up the hundreds of newspapers, magazines, and tabloids, she felt something acerbic lodge itself near her solar plexus._

_She didn't even know what to do, body numb as she looked at the appalling condition of her own face, some five months prior, for the very first time- she had never bothered to even think about seeing if pictures existed since she had been so busy living it._

_Finally being jostled by an impatient business man, Molly dazedly moved toward the rag stand and, in a disturbed trance, picked the top issue of the _Sun up_- a publication she had only ever entertained when juicy gossip on her favorite celebrities was prevalent- that had one of the most graphic photos of her tenderized face and upper body on its cover, and boasted about having a full spread on pages 5-13…all on her and Little's _**altercation**_._

_That was what they were calling her attack. An _**altercation**_._

_She felt nauseous._

_Sickly curious, and dreading what she might find, Molly resisted flipping the magazine open right there on the spot and just forked over the money to the proprietor, who was staring openly at her, possibly recognizing her non-victimized face from several other publications littering his stand. She just looked hard at his nose until he returned her change before turning and scuttling for the exit._

_Feeling intensely exposed, Molly tucked her chin and watched the stairs and then the sidewalk until she was pushing her way through the glass doors that led to the morgue and lab, her mind humming but no actual thoughts making themselves clearly known._

"_Molly!" Tara was there, standing anxiously on the receiving end of her counter, the same issue of the _Sun_ wadded into a roll in her white-knuckled grip. "Molly, are you okay?" So she had seen it too…_

_Why hadn't Lestrade called to tell her this was going to happen? There was no way he could have not known…_

_Could he?_

_Molly mouthed something, too out of it to get what her friend was really asking. "I-I.." She swallowed thickly. "Tara, wh-what is this?" She held up the magazine, eyes fogged in confusion as the beginning of a dull ache started to bloom deep within her chest right above the bitter lump in her mid-gut. _

"_It just hit the stands this morning." Tara shook her head. "Breaking with the court hearing that starts next Wednesday."_

_Molly felt like she had been hit by Little's fist all over again. "I…" She aborted before she could even figure out what she going to say as the ugly weight of what promised to dwell between the _Sun_'s glossy pages all but lay forgotten in the wake of this news._

"_Molly?" Tara's hesitant voice came from by her side. When did she move? _

"_I had no idea." She whispered to the younger girl. "I had no idea he was heading to trial this coming week. N-no one said anything to me." She felt…betrayed. Lestrade had promised to keep her informed on the court dates since he was the lead investigator for the case…or at least had been last she checked. Had something happened that he no longer was? Yet, that should not have stopped him from alerting her, right?_

_He would have told her. He promised._

_He promised her. Why would he not have said anything? She couldn't breathe. He was supposed to keep her in the know; he told her he wouldn't let anything past without informing her. He had promised her, he had promised! This was about the man that nearly killed her in her second home, not some stupid case involving just any run-of-the-mill bad guy. He couldn't possibly have forgotten, could he? _

_Would he?_

"_C'mon." Tara gently slunk and arm around her waist pulling her into a supporting embrace and turned to steer her down to the lab just as the phone started to ring. "Ignore it, it's been doing that since I got here." She said as Molly twisted to look at it._

"_But it could be-" She tried, but Tara only shook her head, silencing her protests._

"_It's been the media all morning. I'm not taking their calls anymore. Everyone else will just have to deal too." _

_This was just too incredible. This wasn't really happening. "T-these pictures…" She held her own copy of the supermarket rag, the lustrous cover trembling slightly in her hand. "What are these?" Where did they come from? Who took them? Why were they…who released them…_

_She had so many questions but could only get out one, her mind was overloaded. She could barely concentrate on forming that first query let alone a whole volley._

_Tara's eyes looked troubled and sad. "They are…they should never have been released." Is what she said and Molly didn't know how to react to such a simple, condemning response. _

_What was the appropriate reaction when one's picture- taken in the aftermath of a severe trauma- were posted and sold for a profit without the subject's consent? _

_Was she supposed to just accept this? She needed more data, she needed information._

_She needed to speak to Lestrade._

_They stepped through the double gray doors into the lab and Tara walked with Molly as she made a beeline for her desk. She dropped her stuff on the small shelf behind her chair and turned to wake her computer up. The blinking of a red light on her work phone caught her attention, and purely out of deeply ingrained habit from years of routinely checking her messages every morning, she hit the button, and was promptly buried under dozens of messages from the _Daily Telegraph, the Sun, the Guardian, the Londoner, BBC News, UK News, ITN, Sky News, The Daily Mail, Star, Mirror_- it was overwhelming her as she sunk slowly into her chair, staring wild-eyed at the phone until Tara resorted to ripping the cord out of the wall, killing the robotic voice alerting them to seven more messages that still needed to be listened to. "That's enough of that." She sniffed dusting her hands off._

_The silence was heavy with the stone cold realization that this went beyond Long Lane's sphere of influence. "Oh, my God." She leaned forward, covering her eyes. "Oh, my God…"_

"_Don't even worry about them, I'll make sure to let everyone know to sod off before I hang up on them." Tara rushed, hands gripping Molly's wrists, the desperate note in her voice doing just enough to ground her to her desk. "I won't let them near, Molly, I promise."_

_She laughed weakly, trying to ease her receptionist's distress. "I'm so out of my depth here." Pulling her hands away, she looked vaguely down at the un-opened magazine on her desk. "How is this considered news?" It was a rhetorical question and points to Tara for sensing that and not trying to answer._

"_Did DI Lestrade say anything about this?" She asked, tapping a pink nail smartly against the photo of Little's grotesque flesh lump of a face. _

_Molly jerkily reached for the magazine, pulling it toward her. "Only that he was scheduled to go sometime in the near future. I just saw him the other day, and he hadn't said anything." And as she fully grasped what this meant, the ache near her heart only increased as a hollow, heated pain started to consume her._

"_Maybe he didn't know?" Tara said quietly, but both of them knew how unlikely that was. In this day and age, cases that caught the media's flighty attention were surrounded by cops that were never not in the 'know'. She felt a jolt as another thought clicked smoothly into place- one she was almost ashamed from not having thought of before that moment. _

_If Lestrade had known, Sherlock would have known as well- because he was a nosey individual who made it his self-imposed job to know everything better than Lestrade did. _

_He hadn't bothered to tell her either._

_Why… why wouldn't they have said anything?_

_She had trouble swallowing, a feeling of desertion starting to swell inside her chest, toxically mixing with the soured bits as the truth started to settle around her shoulders. Why wouldn't they have said anything? Lestrade had promised her, and Sherlock made it his personal business to tell her about all the screw ups in her life all the time. Now would have been one of those rare times she would have valued the warning. So she could have thickened her skin, so she could have informed her mother and sister to stock up on ice cream and chocolate. _

_So she could have at least prepared for this…_

_For this intrusive…for _this_!_

_Her stomach clenched into tight knots as she thumbed the corner of the publication, fighting the need to look and see what was hidden inside with the desire to remain blissfully unaware, before sucking in a breath and cracking it open to the correct page, and the air in her lungs whooshed right out, leaving her breathless and frozen._

_She had expected bad._

_It was worse._

_A photograph of the destroyed lab, the shattered window, and blood streaks covered both pages, but it was the prone figure on the floor that arrested her full attention and flooded her with horrific memories._

_The next few pages were of just her: damaged and unconscious, and completely helpless to the invasive eye of the camera that hid nothing. Her ripped clothes, her bloodstained face- there was a close-up even! Some asshole stuck a camera in her face as she was dying there on the floor and took a picture of her with her eyes cracked open and unseeing. _

_She was shaking as by the time she turned the page and she saw Little's face- prison mug shot pre-acid wash- and her university freshman year school photo, the one she had originally remembered seeing up right after the incident, side by side and that's where the story started._

_She didn't read it. _

_Blindly, she looked up, and Tara's eyes were white rimmed as she watched her. "Molly?"_

_She felt dead inside, like someone had caved out her insides with a spoon and replaced them with only soured things. Her mind oddly quiet as she dropped her brown eyes to the weekly spread before her. "…I…"_

_She didn't even know what to say. Or do…_

_This was a barrage of bombshells she had no prior warning of- and they just blasted her nice little world to bits in fewer than four pages! How was she supposed to handle seeing these? What was the appropriate reaction to seeing the worst moment in her life so far, posted for a profit without her even being aware the possibility?_

_It was a heartbreaking realization that quickly compounded with the ache in her chest and the sour things a little lower. A caustic combination that flooded her veins as she thought of the people who she would have thought cared enough about her to at least give her a phone call. _

_This wasn't right…_

_These photos should never have been made…_

_They were and intrusion on a horrific incident that she should have had a say in controlling._

_An icy feeling slipped down her spine, before a heated flush consumed her face._

_It was like she had been…_

_Turning quickly to her bag, she flung the whole thing violently onto her desk and up ended it, viciously looking for her mobile. Knocking her 'pub trawler', a small sketch pad, hairbrush, makeup compact and other things aggressively onto the floor in her mad search. "Phone." She chanted. "Phone. Phone. Phone."_

_Tara had backed up as a stack of folders, and a pen pot clattered nosily off the desk, scattering amongst the guts of the bag in her frenzied searching. _

_Seeing her black mobile, she hit a button and saw the screen light up and all the messages on it from just that morning. The calls from her mother, from Tara, the texts and call from her own sister- who was in freaking America- and the one call from Lestrade…just one._

_And nothing from Sherlock._

_Hitting dial, she breathed heavily, trying to keep her cool as she stood, shivering, to her feet. She needed to pace, she needed to work off some energy. Tara retreated further away, but Molly saw the tension in her figure as she held herself back until she was needed._

_When he picked up, she broke- because he should have called her instead- then exploded. "How dare you!"_

"_Molly, look-" _

"_Did you know about this?" She snarled into the mouth piece, cutting him savagely off. "Did you know?"_

"_Yes but-"_

"_You didn't warn me?" Obviously he didn't. She would have not been so utterly unprepared._

"_No, Molly, we-"_

_She was too angry, too hurt to even want to listen. "You- you ASS!" She burst. "You unbelievable ass! I just had the fun of discovering my beaten, bloodied, UNCONCIOUS BODY splashed across every news publication in the city with no fore warning! Nothing from you and you knew this was coming?"_

"_Please, Molly, would you listen to-" He started to sound desperate, but she didn't want to hear it. _

"_I was chased down the street by a guy with a camera! I have dozens of messages from the media hogging my voicemail and I had several calls from my mom and sister and-and nothing from you except one call? One? What was that some late 'My bad' you were trying to send me? You knew. You knew for how long?"_

"_Please, let me explain-" The straining note in his voice just incensed her even more._

"_No, I don't- you promised me and I don't want to hear it. Not like this." To her horror, she started to cry. "You di-didn't give me any warning. You promised- You let- you let me walk into this blind- this awful discovery without any- you, you…" Desperate to remain coherent, she sucked on air. "You abandoned me to this nightmare and you- you didn't even- you-" _

_She hung up on him and dropped her phone, giving up. Crying openly as she turned toward Tara, who immediately engulfed her in a hug, saying soothing nothings into her ears as she grabbed desperately for something tangible to hold on to. Loud, wrenching sobs racked her body as she thought about how exposed she was to the public. Stripped of her dignity and privacy and so alone, because the two people who had known, hadn't bothered to help protect her from this._

"_What's going on down here?" She heard someone demand over the noise of her choked blubbing, but she didn't inconvenience herself to even turn, just buried her face further into Tara's shoulder. Wishing she could just disappear._

"_Not now, Bernard, Nic." Tara's voice pierced through Molly's anguished haze and she froze up._

_She wasn't a freak show. She didn't want to be stared at. Pulling quickly away from Tara, and not looking at the useless guys standing awkwardly in the doorway, Molly quickly brushed past them as she made for the restroom and her favorite stall. Slamming the door behind her, she pushed the flimsy trash can in front of it and looked frantically around for something heavier to block the world out. The small window by the sinks had a wedged bit of wood used to help prop the window open- because it had been broken years ago and never fixed- and she snatched it up and stuffed the tapered edge hard underneath the door's rim, jamming it closed- hopefully- before she retreated into the handicap stall, closed and locked that door, and proceeded to continue to bawl her eyes out._

_She cried until her voice was raw, her lungs were fraught with spasm after spasm, and her eyes hurt. She cried until things stopped making sense and then she cried some more for good measure._

_She wanted to go home. She wanted her mother._

_She never wanted to see Lestrade and listen to his excuses. He had time to talk to her, to tell her, and he chose not to. He had broken his word; he had not even tried to keep it. She was returning the favor._

_She didn't even want to think about Sherlock's role in all of this, just that he was as guilty and terrible as Lestrade for leaving her in the dark on something so crucial that she should have known the second they had found out! He was a jerk normally, but she never thought him capable of willingly withholding something that would have hurt her so badly. _

_She had foolishly believed him to be better than his reputation implied. She thought she knew him._

_The door shuddered repeatedly as whoever was on the other sided tried to reach out to her. And she ignored them, because she was so tired of feeling exposed for one day. The magazine was on her desk- go look at it for clues to see if she was 'okay'._

_She was worn-out with this Boris Little drama. She was sick of this baggage, and she was pissed at those who were supposed to be her friends leaving her high and dry. No excuse- they hadn't bothered to deliver one- no attempt at saying it was for her protection would be good enough now because they had failed. If they wanted to help her, they should have been honest from the very beginning- when she had asked, repeatedly what they knew- because she was her own best defense- she would always be her greatest weapon against the world because it was obvious that there were some things she couldn't trust in the hands of another._

_She hadn't been raped, but this exposé on the attack- it was no way an 'altercation'- the pictures of her vulnerable and unaware, broken on the floor and at the mercy of anyone, felt comparable to being completely helpless like in a rape. No choice, no option, no protection, yet everything on display for the world to pick apart and nose at. _

_She rubbed at her cheeks, exhausted and empty. What was she supposed to do? _

"_Molly, open up! Please!" She heard him, Lestrade, on the other side of the door, and she wanted to scream. "Please Molly, this wasn't supposed to happen."_

_She felt trapped. She didn't want his excuses, his apologies, at the moment. She wanted her mother and she did not give two flying shits about how immature that sounded. She did not care, nor give one damn about her being a fully capable adult that should be able to just take this on the chin and bare it with the grace of a saint. Her friends had- purposefully?- failed her- and made her question the validity of that friendship- and she just wanted to be left alone. _

_To rage, and cry, and curse the day she had bothered to get involved with either man because they obviously did not think highly enough of her to keep a simple promise- a few phone calls ahead of the fact would have sufficed perfectly Lestrade! If anyone deserved to know about this before it hit the airwaves, it should have been her! Not Joe Blow on the street or Long Lanes faithful patrons, or even Tara- bless her._

_Oh, this was a nightmare, and it hurt on so many levels she could barely breathe around the aching pain in her chest. She needed to get out of that bathroom, out of the spotlight- good luck._

_She wanted to go where she knew she would be protected from this…bullshit._

"_Please, listen to me! It was a mistake to not tell you but we didn't find the leak until last night! Sherlock found the informant, but the pictures had already made it to publishing! Please, Molly! We never meant for you to find out this way! We never meant for this to happen!" The pictures were only a part of the problem, Lestrade!_

_What about your promise you neglected to keep, she wanted to yell at him. _

_She stood up, and opened the stall door. She couldn't stay in there forever- she didn't want to be in there at all. He stopped talking the second he heard her scrape the trash can away and pull the wedge out. _

_The other side of the door had a collection of people and she felt her temper soar as every eye focused hard on her. "I'm NOT your entertainment!" She snapped at Nic and Anderson, who were conveniently standing together and the first idiots she saw. "Get out!" _

"_Molly, I'm-" Lestrade was visibly distraught, eyes pained as he looked down at her and she bristled at seeing him looking properly remorseful. "I'm so sorry, Molly, I didn't think this would blow up like it did."_

_She wanted to shriek at him, to make him hurt like how she was hurting right at that moment. To let him know the pain she knew. She was so angry, and hurt, and betrayed and she wanted him to understand without a doubt exactly how she felt on the matter. Looking at him, however, his clouded eyes and hunched shoulders, and the way he kept dragging a hand over his face denoting his anxiety, she found she just…couldn't. She didn't have it in her; she didn't have the reserves to gun the throttle and lay into him. Instead she shook her head and turned to shuffle quietly into her lab, too overwhelmed to articulate this to anyone let alone the bane of her existence at that moment._

"_Molly, please, just _give_ me a chance to explain!" He followed at her shoulder, arms wide, as he pled with her. "Please Molly, Sherlock and I had thought this would have upset-"_

_She stopped, turned and backed away from him- and felt no particular pleasure in seeing him flinch- laughing hollowly before saying in a bitter sarcastic voice. "It has upset me! It's upset me greatly if you haven't been able to tell! Surely Sherlock should have been able to deduce this outcome for you!?" _

_He was pulling at his face, watching her like it hurt him. "Molly, this- this was a huge miscalculation on my part but-"_

"_Just stop it." She sniffled, hating herself for the tears that kept leaking out of her eyes. "Just…stop. Before you ruin everything." _

_He looked like he was going to be sick- and it made her mad that his suffering made her ache all the more- face ashen as he rigidly held himself back from reaching for her. _

_She watched at him, and felt the urge to comfort him rise up within her. Which was so stupid. He needed a wakeup call- he deserved the full brunt of her anger- all these people did actually, but especially him, and especially that tosser Sherlock Holmes- who was not even here! She catered to them like a damn bar maid hunting for tips! She worked hard to cover her end in both the business aspect of her job, and just being a simple, good friend. She made sure that bodies were done in concise order and fastidiously taken care of; she recorded, compiled, and handed over neat packets of information with a smile and a 'good luck'. She always came in if they needed her. She sought him out- Lestrade-, made him coffee or tea, encouraged him, and listened to everything he had to say whether it was about work, or Sherlock, or anything! They had known each other for years, had even hung out outside of work when Football, and American Football, season started- Lestrade was a closet Steelers fan, and she just enjoyed the chance to ogle men in tight pants. They double teamed to keep Sherlock healthy and off drugs and clean- like freaking parents! He knew her! Had known her for just as long as she had known him! He should have realized how 'thrilled' she would have been to see pictures she had not known even existed of a night she wished never happened, emblazoned on every trash rag in the city! If not, then Sherlock surely would have- but oh…._

_Sherlock….bloody Sherlock. _

_She could write tomes in tiny print on the things she had done for Sherlock Holmes- and thinking about that now was just going to push her into another crying session of a different capacity all together. If anyone should have known outside her own family how well she would have reacted to this, it should have been Sherlock. Oh, she was steamed. He wasn't a complete dingbat in the emotion department- she had witnessed him react to her being hurt, or humiliated enough that he had. no. excuse. Oh, she could strangle him! She could…she couldn't think about him._

_She didn't want to think about him at all. _

_Ever._

_He and Lestrade deserved each other, those…those…asshats!_

_They screwed up and she needed…she needed time. Not that both of them cared- Sherlock obviously didn't. _

_The bastard._

"_I-I get maybe th-the idea behind what you were doing- I am not stupid- shut up!" She glared at him as he went to speak. "I-I have…I have a lot to think about."_

_The silence in the hallway was suffocating as he closed his eyes in defeat, shoulders tense. When he spoke, she had to struggle to keep from crumbling further because she could see the agony he was in._

_It just hurt her even more. _

"_What does that mean?" His voice was quiet as his darkened eyes opened to watch her, and she dropped her wounded gaze from his anxiously pale face- and then let it harden on the two morons still loitering down the hall. _

_Exhaling shakily, she angled to leave, intent on not saying anything because there was nothing left to be said outside of sobbing uncontrollably on his shoulder- which she would as soon shoot herself then cave to doing- but one last glimpse at that worried expression of his and she conceded a bit anyway, because it was _Lestrade_, and he was someone she still viewed as a friend- because they were friends even if he was a humongous…stupid git that made her question it even for a moment, and she was furious at him and too hurt to deal with this mess right now. "It means we can talk about this later. W-when I'm more secure about…about everything." She waved her hand vaguely around. "Let me get used to this betrayal and then…then we'll talk."_

At the time, she had few options that made sense and looking back on that gut wrenching first day, Molly could still see the scars of omission it had left in her friendships with…everyone- healed over, but not forgotten by anyone because history has the nasty tendency to repeat itself.

Especially if tossers like the Holmes brothers are involved at any point.

She had left work; packed up her stuff and left with barely a word spoken other than to Tara, who promised to check in later to see how she was fairing. She had planned on taking the Tube out to her mothers, and then walking to her house- which was only a mile further down the road, but Lestrade insisted- flat out begged- that he at least pay for a cab- because hell no she was not letting him drive her anywhere for a very real danger of killing him. Or crying on him.

She couldn't call her mum ahead of time, because she had shattered her mobile when she had dropped it back in the lab- screen cracked and there were little bits of phone surrounding it in nice debris circle. She had just left it where it had fallen since it was useless to her now, which was probably for the best, because she wanted to be isolated from the parts of her life that were too painful to touch.

It hurt.

It hurt so bad that they had, knowing everything, let her stroll blindly into that mess, which they quite possibly felt they had neatly handled, and let the one person who deserved to know- from the very beginning- stay completely ignorant, uninformed, and helpless commencing from the get go- which she wholly construed as a betrayal. Another attack with the same ammunition she had already spent months pulling the shrapnel from her skin for, because they knew how she had struggled to not allow that night to rule her. They, both, bloody, knew! Then suddenly, she has the whole sodding thing shoved right in her unassuming face without even a 'Oh, by the way, duck'!

They had let her wander a mine field without a guide! They should have said something- she should have been told! It would have still sucked, but at least she would have had people to hold her head above the water from the get go, instead of playing this game of Guess Who with victimized pictures!

Prats. Tossers,

Asshats!

She knew that she was being, on some inherent level, irrational about some things- from the bits Lestrade had managed to squeeze in between her refusal to listen to his cruddy excuses, they had tried to protect her, maybe…probably- but she had no interest in looking further into where she was overreacting- because she had a right to air her grievances, damn it! She didn't want to let her doormat setting take effect and just let this go, because it was one transgression she couldn't disregard with a grimace and a prayer for a better tomorrow. Not when she looked at herself within the pages of the _Sun_, knocked out face with the soulless eyes.

They had ignored her in 'trying' to protect her, opening the door for her to be traumatized in the most public and raw ways possible.

They had abandoned her until it was too late. Neglected letting her know that some serious garbage was about to hit the fan, and it would be all on her the second it did.

This was a big deal, no matter how she looked at it, then and now, it was a big deal. To be put on display, in a moment of supreme vulnerability- bludgeoned and almost violated and left for dead- and not informed, nor asked, nor included…it was just too much to take. She had struggled for months to put the fears that night evoked to rest, to get over them, to not let them control her life. She had purposefully faced them and tried to banish how nervous she was when she worked late - Sherlock knew, and he had in a rare display of actual, purposeful, decency stayed with her each time since finding her huddled in her booby-trapped lab. He didn't even fake his reasoning.

She had trouble explaining this, still even to this day, the sheer magnitude of this- purposeful or accidental- duplicity and what it meant to her. Back then had been worse, and the only people who seemed to understand on any level, were female and she did not know if it came from a primal understanding of how exposed an unconscious woman who had just been attacked was perceived to a world mostly inhabited by wanker men and their stupidity, or if women just tended to naturally band together under trying circumstances.

She didn't know.

She only knew that from the second she stepped out of that cab at her mother's house, that somehow, someway, things would be okay as long as her mother didn't let her go as she squeezed her in her arms and let her cry herself out. Let her cry her pain into the open and give her a second to not have to be the strong adult she was supposed to be. That her mother would keep the demons at bay for as long as Molly needed to get back up on her own feet. She did not care if people thought her over-dramatic because they could go screw themselves with a rusty fork- Anderson that bigmouthed jerk! He hadn't had some freak take pictures of him without his consenting knowledge and then sell them to turn a profit or whatever the reason was.

She had spent that weekend hidden away with her mother- and super ticked and concerned sister who was stuck in China but called twice a day- and tried not hearing about what was turning into quite the tele-drama with her and Little.

"_I just don't get this." Molly said, watching the news coverage from the kitchen table, hands clenched around a strong Irish coffee. "Shouldn't the Royal family, or the struggling economy, or the WAR in Afghanistan be more important than this?"_

_Tara, who had taken to stopping by every day with flowers- from hospital coworkers, NSY, and random people- and support letters, that had been sent to her lab by the decent public, tapped her fingers in agitation on the table. "It's because of the shock and awe of seeing a man with little to no face because acid ate it, and you in your questionable condition, side by side. It's as spectacular as it is gruesome, and that's before the story is even heard."_

_Molly swallowed around a lump in her throat and Tara gave her a sad, worried look. "I know, Molly. I know."_

By Monday, the reporters had found her, and cluttered her mother's drive and curb with their infernal equipment and general busybody behaviors that had gotten the sprinklers turned on around them by a banding groups of neighbors who hated their presence almost as much as Molly. It was a good morning when she would watch Mr. Smither's next door purposefully set the sequence for the roadside water system on repeat for the entire cycle, forcing the media to move shop further down the road, where Mrs. Bently would echo this same tactic and make them move, once again, to in front of some other person's house, where they would also soak them in the most passive-aggressive form of psychological warfare Molly had ever seen.

She was inexorably touched that they had resoundingly kept this up for the entire duration of the trial.

She had also bit the bullet and had started researching what was being kicked around about her attack- now determined to get ahead of this mess instead of playing catch up in her own center stage production- and had to quell a totally different rage as some groups spoke up in _defense of her_ _attacker_.

"_I was attacked! It wasn't the other way around! What the heck!?" Molly ruptured passionately at the television, clawing at the sides of her head in torment. _

"_Breathe, Molly, dear." Her mother consoled, positively shredding the newspaper in her lap while she looked on, simmering with her own fury as the news anchor and her 'guest' hashed through the likely hood of Molly's overaggressive use of corrosive chemicals. _

It was disturbing that there were Little supporters out there- kind of like the Chris Brown devotees who were determined that people see the 'good' in a man that hurt someone so badly- for no applicable reason- they had to be hospitalized. Being a woman only made it worse in her eyes because no matter how much protein powder and weights she consumed or worked out with, she would never be as strong as a strong man. The laws of nature were written and there was nothing she could do in that department aside from condemn the dreadful people who took advantage of this.

It was simply disgusting, and Tara and her mother had taken to sorting the 'support' mail because there were trolls out there who would insert their two-cents and try to make her feel awful about protecting herself- which really did nothing but make her want to hate them in their idiotic ignorance. And Molly didn't hate anyone- her mother taught her to not waste such strong feelings on something so negative because what would it accomplish? But these people….

Ugh, she wished she could package a punch to the throat and ship it off in the post to every activist that had the gall to send her 'hate' mail.

And the media- this was her first real dose of having those vultures around and she would see them again in years to come and would never quite get over their circling of a perceived 'kill'. The bastards…Flashing pictures like crazy every time her mother went to open the front door, shouting bald questions at the top of their lungs about Molly and her 'altercation'- BLOODY ATTACK, IDIOTS!

Lestrade had found out- probably from an overly aggressive Tara who about put her heeled boot up his arse- and had her mother's property cleared promptly of media wagons and their ring masters. He had called ahead of time and spoke with her mum- because she certainly wasn't speaking with him- asking her to inform Molly of what he wanted to do, and she felt herself ease off the hostile thoughts she had been having about him- eased, not vanquished, much to his chagrin she imagined. The media hadn't gone far, but they couldn't point those huge cameras through their front room window anymore.

He was trying. He was trying to show he did care- which, if she stopped and thought about it, he had a lot on his plate as it was, and she felt like a jerk for heaping her anger at him on top, but then she'd look at the cover of the _Sun_ she had hidden in her sock drawer and remember that he deserved every ounce of suffering she could give because they were supposed to be friends as well as city coworkers- and she could see that by the way he would respond to questions during the one or two media conferences she had deigned to watch over the course of the trial. He wasn't smooth with his responses- he was never truly at ease in the bulls eye of the cameras to give off that competent air that Sherlock always gave him hell for 'lacking'- but she did not see that it came from a shortage of skill or proficiency at what he did. He would get uncomfortable and she remembered watching in fascination as the muscles in his jaw ticked when questioning would turn more personal to the subject of her or how his eyes hardened when inquiries about her 'usage of flesh eating solutions were necessary.'

She had even cheered for him when he had 'slipped' and stated very publically that such a vicious attack on her- or any person- warranted her application of any method to save herself, regardless of how unsavory the outcome. That Little should just be peachy that he was lucky enough to be alive.

He had probably copped it big time from overhead, but he never bothered to show remorse for his lack of tact.

Lestrade was a humble man that did the best he could with everything he had, which was lucky for the Yard because despite, once again, Sherlock's claims to the contrary, Lestrade was- normally- a smart, smart man, but he did not have the patience for the political word games that were typically required of men in his position. He would rather give a blunt, yes or no, instead of explaining the stupidly obvious- covering everything so no nitwit in the stands that wanted to cause trouble, could. Sometimes he'd even be sarcastic when the clear answer was easily had by even the dumbest of watchers…and that never went over well because people thought he was serious.

Sherlock had a veritable ball when that happened. Poor Lestrade…

As the week drug on, she softened more and more for him- because she had never been any good at being irate with friends…probably why people thought she was a rug. Plus, Lestrade was never someone she could stay mad at for long since he was generally a big cupcake that showed affection easily and readily. He was a good friend. He had just made a mistake- that had cost her years of life expectancy from the strain- but when she did finally bother to listen to him- someday- she could be reasonably assured his rationale behind his actions would lean toward her best interests being the principal motivation.

Unlike Sherlock, who was a horse's ass and would in all probability throw her under a moving bus if it warranted a result that lead to the truth- especially if it was something that could dig in and hold up against his giant brain. He was most assuredly on team 'ends justify the means'. Okay, that was a little- absolutely miniscule- uncharitable of her because he needed access to the lab and she was his meal ticket, ergo, she was 'preciously' important to his hobby. So he kind of had to maybe care.

Selfish git.

She was not impressed. But the more Sherlock stayed away- and the simmering acid in her gut started to turn to a roiling boil because of that absence, and with Lestrade being the friend he was trying to show he was, it helped her ease up on the DI even more- which was really aggravating that he made her want to forgive so quickly because her life was under no one else's jurisdiction, thank you, very much! She'd last, maybe, another few days being mad at Lestrade before she'd wear herself down to just being hurt, and that would make him feel worse since he was such a nice guy. She had already forgiven him this folly of breaking a promise- generous of her- because he was her friend and she was beyond the stage in life where her pride was more important than their friendship- but she was still mad at him at the moment- and she was not planning on giving him the all clear for a while yet- four days tops. He needed to understand that this was not okay- that this had been a bad choice and she viewed it as a betrayal of her trust- that could last a good five years for her to get over.

And if she were completely honest herself, she had understood why he had chosen to not inform her- she did because as she stated, she wasn't stupid. No one wanted to cause a friend unwarranted pain if it can be avoided- plus Lestrade and Sherlock could be absolute tossers when it came to the feelings of women, which explained a lot why both were still single…or at least why Lestrade was, Sherlock was something else- a huge prat with man-child tendencies toward the dramatic. While their motive had been pure- maybe, she still hadn't bothered to take Lestrade's calls- their ends did not justify their means of letting her flap in the breeze. He said they had found out about the leak Thursday night, and Sherlock was already zipping through the lines causing havoc and probably having a bloody brilliant time, hunting the bastard down, but it was too late, and the story blew up faster than anticipated- spectacularly so. Lestrade had not wanted to worry her beyond what the stress of the case would naturally be causing- she understood that too, but he broke his word and had not even bothered to tell her about the case ahead of time.

Which was super shady of him. She suspected Holmesian influence at some juncture, but that could just be the desire to not be mad at him anymore- and Sherlock was a perfect whipping post since he didn't care.

Gitwad.

Good, bad, ugly, it was her life that had been gambled with and if she weren't playing, it was a breach in her trust- because Lestrade had known everything and had kept a lot of it from her. He had felt they knew better than she did on what was good for her. He and emotionally inhibited Sherlock Bloody Holmes!

Oh but Sherlock…just thinking about that man blew Pandora 's Box open and promptly to smithereens. She hadn't let herself dwell on him for the last few days since she was so upset, and Lestrade's antics on screen were a good distraction, but as Tuesday drug on into early Wednesday morning, her thoughts on the six foot consulting detective finally seemed to catch up with her. Oh, she was furious at him still, and it just got worse with him as time wore on because he had all but vanished. To who the hell knew where!

Tara had said he had not been in to the lab- not that she had asked, but Tara seemed to sense that she had wanted to know, regardless of how leery Tara felt about the eccentric genius since the night she watched him detonate outside _Union Underground _a month or so ago- and Bernard hadn't seen him either. Molly wasn't sure what this meant, but it did not sit well with her. It was like he was purposefully avoiding her- not that she wanted to see him or anything.

She just wanted to be able to rage at him too! Was that so much to ask? He owed her one damn it!

That first weekend had been so full of her being upset and hurt and mad, but by Tuesday morning, she was just hurt and humiliated and his absences was barely noted outside to curse at like a sailor. Everyone had seen her half-naked barely alive pictures and many had a whole truck load to say on the subject- most folks, bless them, were ticked that the _Sun_ had so callously posted those graphic photos, and the backlash had been…impressive. But even through this tidal wave of emotion and embarrassment and media monkeys ambushing anyone who came within a house distance to her mother's and still no Sherlock- who usually made contact like an alien if he wasn't on a case in some way, shape, or form.

And she had a special little corner- completely separate from all the other anger she had being directed at him- of her mind for just being livid at him for still not being there for her.

Every uncertainty she had about their friendship up to that point, was coming true and it stung and ached all the way to her core- looking back, it was easy to understand because she had yet to have the rock solid experience of dealing with Sherlock in a crisis of such a magnitude at this point, where emotional support was needed- and he usually pretended emotions didn't exist in his world- which he sucked at. Those instances bore repeating for her to stop doubting him- something that really made HIM mad when he found out, the arse, because he went into a pissy sulk. Did he ever meet himself? Apparently not, because if he had, her shaky belief in him would not have been much of a surprise. It takes heaps of courage and well placed faith to believe in someone even when they weren't there right beside you to prove themselves. It would be years before the lessons learned at this point in her life would be put to the test once again. But until then, she was stuck with nagging questions and irritating superficial uncertainties that she could not quell with whispered hopes and maybes. It just screamed that he didn't really care that she had been blasted bare by the media and left for public consumption- and this was huge because she had been so sure, so convinced that he at least liked her well enough- he sure had a lot to say over the last few weeks concerning her new correspondence with Wade's friend Doughnuts…

Some highly articulated and condescending stuff.

He was a jerk- this shouldn't surprise her anymore.

This radio silence, however, was terrible and just added fuel to the fire.

She was fuming and he didn't care _enough_ and that _hurt_, which made her _angry_ and it was a rotten spiral that felt like high school all over again.

_Getting ready to head to the court house for the first day of the trial proceedings, Molly spent a good portion of the time looking at the scars on her stomach and fingers. Acid was the ultimate deforming agent when it came to physical damage and she had gotten off lucky by not needing skin grafts to help close the wounds- they had been small on her stomach, and too awkward for her fingers. But the scars were still there, and while she might shed her fingers ones- the worst of the damage- the drops that had hit her belly would brand her forever, a testament to her survival. _

_She didn't want to do this._

_She wanted Little to go away and preferably die without her knowledge of how and when. She had been stronger when this reality had been a distant mountain, but now that she stood at the foot of it, her courage was flagging under the stress. Her resolve to see him locked away was still prevalent, but wading through that circus out front, into the heart of an even larger spectacle, to come face to face with Little, sounded horrible. _

_She wished she had gone to work instead- but Donny Mathews had been adamant that she focus on herself and what she wanted to do, which was oddly compassionate for a boss of a working business. This understanding was highly suspicious, but she didn't have a Holmesian intuition for such deducing of the intangible workings of people's motives. _

_She didn't even have a Holmes to ask- not that she wanted to._

_Or a Lestrade- not that she wanted to._

_She should be pissed. Which she most certainly was, because they were gits and she did not want deal with them._

_It was something she told herself to keep from feeling miserable. _

_Pulling the rest of her clothes on- a pretty blue summer dress with a cream cardigan to keep it conservatively respectable- Molly spent the remaining few hours till opening ceremonies pacing her mother's halls, too worked up to sit still. _

"_How are we going to get past them? I don't mind taking the tube, but they'll hound us each step of the way…" She had to keep from clawing marks into her face as she passed window after window and saw the mob waiting just past the hedges. _

"_Don't you worry about that, dear." Her mother's voice came floating out of her room where she was finishing the last few curls in her hair. "A car has been sent to claim us."_

_She was fidgeting something fierce as she stood at the doorway to her mother's bedroom. "A car?"_

"_Been outside for the last thirty minutes- early. The trial doesn't start for another hour, and I feel no desire to cater to anyone but you, darling."_

_Molly slinked over to one of the front windows in the den and pulled the edge of the curtain back to see. She had been expecting a panda, or even Lestrade's BMW- because he offered at least three times- kudos to him- but what she saw made her cringe._

_She was starting to feel that all nondescript black sedans belonged to only one person. "Oh, bugger."_

_What was he doing here? _

_Ugh, she was calling a cab- no way was she dealing with a Holmes- outside to yell at a particular Holmes- on this day of days. _

"_Compliments of the Yard, dear." Her mother's voice said as she passed her on her way to the kitchen. "How about I make you a cup of tea for the nerves?"_

"_Mum, what- the Yard? Why?" She turned to trail after her into the kitchen._

"_That it was for our protection, convenience, and that higher ups insisted." Her mother rattled off as she filled the kettle. "I get the impression that you are rather well liked down at the New Scotland Yard. They were most adamant that I accept."_

_She frowned, biting her lip. Did Mycroft work for the Yard? As a board member or something? _

_Sherlock had never said what he did exactly, only that he had his 'literal fingers in too many pies'. Which at the time she figured was a slight on the older Holmes' weight because Sherlock said it was, but now…_

_Now she felt maybe there had been some unwilling subtext._

"_Is something wrong with that car, Molly?" Her mother was watching her steadily from the counter, and she felt herself tense. _

"_N-no. Just…just it reminds me of someone is all."_

_Her mother's gaze sharpened, but she held her piece on the matter, because the phone started to ring. Molly glared at the offending bit of technology- absolutely fed up with people ringing the house looking for a scoop or a sound bite. Her mother had been polite and insisted on answering every call just in case it was someone important- family- but that didn't stop Molly from wishing she could throw it out the back window into the hydrangeas._

_Sighing, her mother dropped what she was doing and reached for the nagging device. Her face revealed nothing of the conversation- which told Molly it was not the media, praise Jesus- but also that it wasn't anyone she probably cared to know._

"_Just a minute." Cupping her hand around the receiver, her mum raised her brows. "Anthea? She would like to speak with you?"_

_Molly shook her head. "I don't know who that is."_

"_She said that you would say that, and that Mycroft sends his regards." She said slowly. "Who is Mycroft?"_

_Well, drats._

"_Sherlock's older brother." Molly mumbled. "Tell her I'm…I'm busy or something."_

_Her mother raised a brow, probably at the equally odd name as the cancer of her good mood, before lifting the phone back to her ear. "Molly isn't falling for this. Can I take a message, dear?" She bugged out at her mum's bluntness._

_She listened attentively before nodding, said a pleasant enough goodbye, and hung up. "She says that the car is for our benefit, that it's Holmes free and that it wasn't leaving without us." Her mother said plainly. "Sherlock's brother. Mycroft… I know I've heard that name before."_

_How the Hell did all these people know what's going on in her own head? "Probably from a nightmare or something." Molly fretted as she shuffled over to the table. "I'm so sick of this overhanded dealing with those two. They never ask- or they barge in under the guise of a request but have already planned the whole thing out so you fall into their trap anyway." She was uncertain of Mycroft up until she saw that sedan and then it was too obvious to ignore, even if she'd had maybe two- in depth- conversations with him. Holmes' were birds of a feather…_

"_I don't know, dear, they seem like they do really care about you what with sending a car, and keeping the blood sucking journalists away. Especially your friend. Why, that Sherlock was most adamant that he know everything when you were in the ICU. About drove the doctors to drink with all his questions regarding your care, health and recovery. Quite informative."_

_Molly did not see this as 'caring' behavior. "He just likes to know everything…was probably lining up to get at my liver if I died." That last part was bitter and uncalled for and she knew it._

"_Harsh, love." Her mother still had to point that out though. "Desperation is not a mantel a man hides very well behind devious intentions."_

_Wait, what? "What?"_

_Her mother turned and watched her with the same soft look she had seen a dozen times in her life, a look that spoke of secrets and things she just could not perceive, even if obvious. "He was going spare waiting for you, but he did wait. Up until you woke up, and then he decided to give everyone a breather. Detective Inspector Lestrade had to keep intervening so as to stall from having to have Sherlock thrown out."_

_This did not warm the ice in her toward that git because she knew how pushy and domineering he was in general. "This doesn't translate into affection mom, not with him. He's just picky about his hobbies and I happened to cater very well to them."_

"_Or," She dug around in one of the cabinets for the loose leaf tea, "You are friends, and he was worried. Not every interaction is going to have ulterior motives hidden in the wings."_

_Molly scowled at the wooden grain on the table. "You don't know Sherlock." She muttered under her breath. Yes, she knew she was being unfair to him, but he was easy to think terrible things about since he had not bothered to make contact._

_Anti-sentimental pansy._

"_All I'm saying is give him a chance to explain." Her mother whisked two mugs down in front of them, swiftly followed by a steeping tea pot, milk, and sugar. "You may be pleasantly surprised."_

She was surprised alright, but not for the right reasons.

Sherlock was a git, and had no concept of boundaries or the fact that she was mad at him. His problem wasn't that he lacked attentiveness to human emotion, no, he just didn't fathom appropriate responses all that well- yes, he got lucky, or if he wasn't purposefully trying to be a jerk, but those were as rare as catching the Giant Squid on camera. Distraught people should not be yelled at. Laughing kids should not be snapped at. Arguing adults should not be goaded. Happy folks should not be shat on- he did stuff on purpose a lot to stir the pot before strolling off with a sharp little grin and a popped collar.

So why would he do anything different with her? It just reinforced how unimportant she was- and that stung because she had been so sure that it wasn't the case at all.

_In the end, another call came from this Anthea, the very second her hand touched the phone to request a cab actually, and Molly grimaced hard before lifting the earpiece and pressing it to her, something she had refused to do since the news came out on her and Little. "Hullo?"_

"_No cabs, Ms. Hooper." A smooth voice, one she didn't think she would recognize after so long hummed into her ear._

"_What- how did you know?" Arguing about being told not to call for a taxi momentarily forgotten._

_There was a heavy breath, as if a laugh escaped despite the owner's wishes. "A Holmes is involved." She said it like it was the only evidence she needed to deduce this._

_Which it totally was. "This is…Anthea?" Molly guessed, face contorted in thought._

"_Yes, Ms. Hooper. The car is waiting for you when you are ready to leave." The line clicked off, and she was left listening to the distant murmurs of lurking watchers outside. _

_Well that just sucked nuggets. _

_Softly cradling the receiver, Molly looked back behind her at her mother, who was monitoring everything about her- so much like Sherlock but without the possibility of saying something mean- and blinked. "That car is apparently nonnegotiable."_

_Her mother swirled her rapidly cooling tea around in her cup- she hadn't taken one draw from the thing which broadcasted loud and clear to Molly how distracted her mother truly was, even if nothing else could say the same about her unflappable demeanor- mouth curving into an amused smile. "I did not think it would be."_

_Well that made one of them._

_She did not want to go to this…trial. And having a car delivered to her mother's by the older relative of someone she was still so angry with did not sooth her frazzled nerves. She was not ready to see…him…Little. She would never be ready to see him- because she had seen the worst of that man and no matter how he looked now, she would never forget crazy yellowed eyes and rancid breath, or thick fingers touching her unprotected inner thighs. _

_She had enough on her plate dealing with the collections of slivered cross hatch scaring that littered her back and legs, the giant scare on her hand that looked so bad when she wore rings or a bracelet because they drew attention to it and that it was superficial but still somehow mattered to her. She fought nightmares and cruel gossip and traumas that would flare up when things became too quiet, or dark, or…it was just a mess._

_She was a mess- and she had so thought she was doing better! She had slowly graduated from having music on all the time in the lab, to just some of the time. She had gone out late with Tara and Wade and his friends. She was almost prepared to turn her nightlights off at night-_

_And then every news stand in the country goes and blows a hole through her careful reconstruction and she was back at square one all over again- but this time, there was no buffer of recovery to keep her focus trained elsewhere aside from the harsh comments of arse's like that journalist from the _Daily Mirror_ who kept bellowing things about her 'near rape' at the top of his lungs whenever her mother snuck a hand out to grab the paper. She was used to insensitivity, but never directed so acutely at this particular subject- Sherlock, for all his poor manners and appalling traits, never poked at her over the Little incident. He may push when he felt she should not do something- the night at the club came to mind because he had been wickedly mad about that and did not hesitate to describe to her the blunders she made in his nasty lecturing voice as she dry heaved- but even he had enough decency crammed into that huge brain that tended to delete 'unimportant stuff', like who was Prime Minister, to not draw blood from her fears. _

_She missed him, but he was also part of the reason why she was even in this questionable state of mind! He hadn't bothered to tell her this was coming and now she had to paddle through it seemingly unaided because she was too upset, on top of everything else, to want to have a much needed heart to wall with the blockhead- not that she could get ahold of him, or wanted too._

_Or Lestrade, because HE should have known better out of the two of them._

_She felt alone because her two friends were not here, and that was because they hurt her enough that she could not bear having them near- well one of them, as the other was AWOL- this was also a lie, but she didn't know how to get over being angry to ask them in a reasonable voice to go to court with her._

_So when she stood before the entry hall door- with fate waiting directly on the other side with huge Nikkons ready to knock her head off her shoulders from a distance of twenty meters- Molly could feel the roiling in her stomach, the fear of the unknown clawing at her mind, and the distaste of having to face all of this with the eye of the public trained unblinkingly at her- she had seen the live news coverage some fifteen minutes prior the exterior of her mum's house._

_It sucked._

"_Head held high, Molly." Her mother placed a warming hand on her cheek. "Those bastards will have nothing to feed on if you refuse to dole out the goods." _

_She wanted to cry, but nodded instead, voice lost somewhere behind her tongue._

_Her mother looked at her, before smiling- a proud smile, not a pitying one- and turned and opened the door. Stepping out ahead of her as if a trained body guard for her emotions- or just a trained body guard in general because apparently it was her sweet-faced mum that sank her sugar coated poisonous fangs into NSY to get the media to back the hell up, and it was her mother who blackened the eye of one particularly insistent reporter who had kept ringing the doorbell on Monday- Molly briefly glimpsed him standing by the _Sky News_ truck._

_The black sedan was parked stubbornly at the curb, blocking the driveway almost selfishly from anyone who may have wanted to use it, and as Molly and her mother approached through the flashing and shouting, a tall, blonde, man stepped out and swiftly opened the door to the back seat for them to dive quickly into. The second the door shut behind her, Molly drooped against the seat rest and the door, oddly grateful that Anthea- and Mycroft- had insisted on supplying the vehicle- because tinted windows helped her feel like there was a shield up between her and the world._

"_This is so stupid." She said into the muted noise coming from outside after the driver had slipped back in and turned the car on, allowing soft violin music to pump through the sound system, before pulling smoothly away from the impenetrable sanctuary she would not see for hours. "Why can't there be a crisis elsewhere on the planet to draw their attention instead?"_

"_Because no crisis outside a huge loss of life is as captivating as the one involving a pretty damsel and a disgusting beast- it's impersonal, hair raising, and dramatic." Her mother said, shifting to get more comfortable. "It was like this before, but you were blessedly distracted."_

_Molly rubbed at her cheek- the one Little had so nicely dented- and tried to focus on just keeping her head. "I hate this." Her voice was quiet as it shook. "I hate this so much."_

"_I know, love." Her mother's hand came down and grasped her acid eaten one, and squeezed. "But you aren't facing it alone."_

_Her mother would always be a protecting force, but Molly still felt partially exposed, because her mum could only do so much. She may have her shoulder, her front, and her back, but she was still just one person- her sister was busy trying to translate the peace between China, North Korea, and the United States, and she still called this morning with strict instructions to give anyone the middle finger who tried to make her cry on purpose, but she wasn't here with her. Tara had to work- she didn't even have a mobile to text for distraction. Lestrade was helping to head this melee in the court room as it was- apparently still indeed, very much his case, the jerk- and she was technically still mad at him- but she would give him a free pass if only she could sit between him and her mother so she could feel more grounded._

_More secure._

_As they hit the M4, picking up speed on their way to face the inevitable, Molly felt a too familiar feeling bubble up within her. _

_Dropping her head to thump softly against the glass window of the car, Molly gulped down the desire to whine. She just didn't want to do this. She did not want to do this._

_She wanted things to go back to what they were before the news broke- not before Little attacked her because good things had happened since then- but before her little dream was poked through with rude wake-up calls and prats with enormous camera lenses. She wanted to look forward to her days at the lab and chatting with Tara. She wanted to go back to being happy to seeing or hanging out with Lestrade, because she missed him. She wanted to go back to paling around with Sherlock, a present, snarky, wonderfully brilliant Sherlock- who she missed so bad and was so angry with at the same time it gave her a head ache just acknowledging there was a contradiction. _

_She missed her friends because doing this alone was hard._

_At least Lestrade would be there- he didn't need to know she was happy to see him…but she wasn't banking any money on keeping up that charade because if she got to sit near him, she'd probably crush his hand in her own for comfort. _

_But where was her other friend? The one who had no trouble invading her problems with his bratty antics? _

"_Where is Sherlock?"_

"_I don't know, dear. Have you spoken to him?" Her mother unerringly answered her mental question- before Molly jerked. Did she say that out loud? _

"_N-no. No I haven't." She said unsteadily, wilting further against the door. _

"_He'll turn up." She said, squeezing her hand, and Molly tried returning the gesture. _

"_I miss him." She gave a voice to the ache that had been pressing at her heart since she was able to focus on other things aside from being super hurt and livid with him and Lestrade. _

"_I know." Because of course she did. Molly didn't have enough friends to not complain about not seeing the few she did have. Even _if_ she was miffed with them. This is what happened when a person stupidly allowed their sphere of influence and friendship to be so tiny. She fixated on them too much!_

_London loomed large around her rolling refuge and as the building that held her future in its walls peaked out behind its neighbors, Molly shrunk back away from the window. "I- I don't think I can do this." She said in a panicky voice. "I don't want to see him."_

"_That's just the fear talking. It's okay, that's normal." Her mother's voice worked its way past the numbing fog clouding Molly's logic. "You can do this. He won't be able to hurt you."_

"_He already has." Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears, as the car pulled up to the steps leading to the court house. "I...I…" Maybe if this had not been so terribly public, maybe if things had been less extraordinarily gory, she wouldn't have been this scared to face him. She knew she wasn't a coward, but a person could only take so much stress. She would maybe look back in a few years and see that she had been a tad pusillanimous with her actions, or she might look back and still feel that shearing anxiety that was crippling her lungs at that very moment._

_She wanted to go home. She wanted to disappear. She did not want to face this by herself without her sister, or her mother, or Lestrade, or that wanker Sherlock._

_She wanted…_

_She wished…_

_The door to her side opened, and she was suddenly face to face with reality in the form of flashbulbs, shouting voices, and one very grim faced Greg Lestrade, who used his own large frame to try and block the worst of it. _

_She had never been so happy to see him. _

_He barely offered his hand and she was already squeezing the life out of it in a white knuckled grip. The skin around his eyes tightened as she pulled herself from the backseat, but he kept his peace, waiting for Molly's mother, before nodding at the driver and turned to escort them up the steps._

_With her mom on one side, and Lestrade on the other, Molly was able to ascend those thirteen steps in short order._

_Once inside the echoing marble mausoleum that held the power within its bowels to make or break a person's life, Lestrade pulled her down a long hall and stopped once they were far enough from anyone who may have wanted to listen in. Molly's mother was at her side the entire time. _

"_How you holding up?" His dark eyes were hard, but she heard the tenderness in his voice. _

"_Better than I was." She said honestly. Sucking in a breath, she plucked up the courage to look at him. "Are you sitting with me?" It sounded needy but she could give a rats rear at this point. She needed him. _

_He seemed reluctant to disagree. "I am up front with the prosecution- which is the last place I want you to be. Little is…he needs to be swiftly put down so we can bury this with yesterday's trash. Where he belongs."_

_She just held tighter to him. She wanted to stay with the only friendly face that knew what was going on. She didn't want to let him go._

_He sighed, and tugged her into a hug. "It'll be okay. And as soon as this is over, we can get together so I can properly apologize." She felt his voice rumbling through his shirt, and she had to bite down the desire to forgive him out loud just to finagle him into sitting by her. Now was not the time. _

"_Thank you." She whispered and he tightened his hold, letting her know he heard her loud and clear before he stepped back and got on with the business at hand._

"_This should be rather painless- Sherlock gathered enough evidence to indict this man's ancestors- but there could still be a few hiccups, just so you know. Colin Dunn is his attorney and I have no clue HOW Little has the connections, but Sherlock said Dunn's involvement shouldn't make a difference. He won't be able to save that useless lump with the odds so stacked against him, but he could still cause a stir."_

_Colin Dunn was a veritable barracuda in the court room, and Molly only knew about him because some of her autopsies had been pulled for evidence to convict his opponents or save his clients. Every person that had connections to the judicial system knew of Dunn and the price tag he carried. "Who is paying him?"_

_And Lestrade's lips quirked up, probably amused that she came to the right conclusion so quickly. "Sherlock hasn't said, but I think it's because he's taken it personally."_

_Sherlock this and Sherlock that. "Sherlock sure has had a lot to say." Her voice was laced with vinegar and Lestrade cringed, undoubtedly knowing where this was coming from._

"_Er…about that." He started, rubbing at his neck in a gesture that personalized his brand of discomfort. "I'm not speaking for him, because he has to do that himself, but I can tell you there is a good reason why he isn't allowed here today…or for the length of the court proceedings."_

_She felt her brow slam low over her eyes. "Good reason? He hasn't said one word to me- never mind." She was not discussing that butthead with Lestrade- who would go and repeat it to said butthead because those two were probably chatty like school girls discussing crushes. It was always the unassuming ones…_

"_Yeah, the two are linked." He said in a rush, agitated but not at her. "When he shows his face, try to not to throw rocks too hard at his head until he can fully explain. Then go ahead and toss as many as you want."_

_What the hell was he talking about? "What are you talking about?"_

_He shook his head. "I…can't because I honestly don't know the full details, just enough that my job would require me to arrest him if I knew the whole story. Listen, one more thing before I have to go get my stuff in order- Little…his appearance is going to be a shock- do NOT feel bad for him."_

"_I wasn't going to." She gave him a 'duh' look. "I've already seen what he looks like in the titillating issue of the _Sun_."_

_For a second he was as angry as she'd ever seen him, but it was gone half a beat later. "I know you Molly Hooper. You're too nice. Just understand that things are not what they have appeared the last few days and that I'll explain when I don't have the full weight of the justice system squashing my conscious in-between revealing the full truth to you." At her clouding look, he quickly jumped to finish. "My job won't allow me, Molly, not during an ongoing trial. Even if you are directly involved. But the second that hammer hits the wood, I'll be freer to speak." She sighed, and he looked a little more at ease because of it._

_He offered one extra smile to her mother before he hurried away to wherever it was he needed to be, and Molly turned toward her mother. "Did that seem odd or was that just me?"_

"_Sounds like your boy Sherlock has got quite the story." She said as she took Molly's arm. "But no sense in standing out here in this drafty corridor talking about things we aren't yet meant to know. So let's go and get seats that will allow us to scowl at everyone without having to strain ourselves."_

Molly decided around this time in her life that she hated secrets. As a kid, telling someone something that deserved a pinky promise was invigorating and kind of cool, because it linked two people together against everyone else. Like a partner that held the same treasure that only they knew the full value of.

As an adult, secrets lost their thrill and mystery and became things to dread finding out about, because at her age, secrets were just lies that had yet to break to the surface of universal awareness. A secret as an adult was almost never a good thing as people were too prideful or too devastated at that point of reveal to be able to let go of the betrayals that almost always came along with secrets: a cheating spouse or significant other, a money problem, a poor decision with terrible consequence, or just a choice that affected others so personally it soured the soul.

The big secrets. Life shattering ones- sometimes those could be really good, but rarely were. For instance, winning the five-hundred million pound lotto and not letting that implode one's life from the inside out. Most of the time it was someone cheated and a family suffered.

Molly did not believe in cheating- you were either with someone all the way, or you weren't. There was no having cake and eating it too. She didn't tolerate it and had enough painful experience of knowing that stabbing pain of being cheated on. Cheating was not for her, and she didn't date known cheaters.

She paid her bills on time and she lived within her means- an occasional splurge did not count…she had to replace her vomit painted hooker heels.

She also tried to not back herself into corners with secrets that carried the weight of other people's lives on her shoulders and she would probably have walked right through her entire life without having a concern for this except she had once let a man into her lab that seemed to be made of nothing but secrets and hidden motives.

Sherlock Holmes was a problem she had found herself rather fond of almost too quickly to be considered wise. He was the definition of mystery and she had furthermore discovered how irritating that was at the same time as finding out how addictive that trait made him. He was smart, and unique, and never boring.

He was also terrible for her nerves and he was a handful to deal with.

Especially when he was collecting secrets- which was like his favorite past time, outside of stealing NSY handcuffs and body parts.

But never before had those secrets dealt with her- or hurt her. The pain of public reveal and the humiliation of having every person she met for weeks following the trial, knowing in intimate detail how easy it was for Little to slap her around her own place of work, was exhausting.

She had been so angry with him- something he knew but just shrugged off, the git.

And he made it bloody obvious that she ranked rather low on his LIST OF THINGS SHERLOCK CARED ABOUT. Quite possibly right above purposefully leaving dead mice in his land lord's mailbox.

What she didn't realize- because the wanker didn't understand the concept of communication- is what had forced his hand.

That she had been wrong.

And that he was too unpredictable to ever use assuming to gage what he truly was planning because apparently that was 'sloppy like Anderson's work'.

_Molly had personally never been in a court room and all her visual cues and familiarity came from watching too much cruddy American television like _Judge Judy_ or _Small Claims Court_ but she had the presence of mind to not immediately adopt that this was going to be anything like those shows. For one thing, there was nothing friendly about the amphitheater like setup- viewers in the stands and the actual business deal taking place well below them._

_There was a crowd for sure, but not to the extent she had secretly feared. Her mother and she had snagged seats further up, and Molly felt better having several rows and a height advantage separating her from where ever they were planning to put Little._

_As the clock on the wall ticked closer and closer to show time, Molly became more withdrawn and silent, barely even moving to allow for a thin, older gentleman to squeeze passed her legs as the last of the jury and court support personnel stationed themselves. _

_Her eyes found Lestrade's graying head of hair near the very front, right behind what she recognized was to be the prosecution- and they had their heads bent together, seriously discussing something. She was so focused on watching the play of emotion across Lestrade's handsome face that it literally took the startled collective intake of the audience and jury to let her know something was amiss._

_Snapping her eyes to the doorway, she did a double take, and felt her belly drop out._

_The magazines had nothing like this in their issues…they didn't have anything remotely close to this…_

_Boris Little was a grotesque mess of partially assembled skin flaps and off colored textures. He had bald patches on his head and all around one ear and his nose was barely a lumpy nub. His mouth a stretched line across his face with one corner pulled back and slightly puffed over ugly teeth that could no longer be hidden. His cheeks and one of his eyes were just…gone. Rippled smooth in such an unnatural way she could feel the horror seeping into her. _

_Last time she had seen him, he was thundering down the hallway out the doors, howling in pain…but he had been running. Now he was folded into a wheelchair, with tubes snaking into his stubby nose and down his arms. He leaned hard to one side; the eye still left was staring into the middle distance with a droopy lower lid. It was the worst thing she could have imagined, and even knowing this was the man that had attacked her, it didn't stop the bile from rising in her throat._

_What had she done?_

_A loud voice obnoxiously cleared itself nearby and Molly jumped, barely flicking her eyes downward to see Lestrade glaring hard at her. He must have been able to see the…shock she felt zinging up and down her spin that pricked her flesh into little bumps._

_What had she done to this man? No one deserved to be…this…_

"_He ruthlessly attacked you, Molly. He could have killed you and worse." Her mother's voice was like a clear breeze in her ear. "Don't you dare feel an ounce of guilt for how he turned out."_

_What did it say about her that she felt terrible for him, regardless? _

_It was a question that would haunt her for the entire day's proceedings- something she was equally ashamed to say she had not really followed because she could not stop gawking at the warped thing in the wheel chair seated directly opposite in the room from Lestrade. _

_When the judge called for a recess she had quickly excused herself from her mother, claiming to need the restroom and that she would be right back and no she did not need company._

_Skittering down the marble coated corridor as if being chased by a ghost, she found the ladies as quickly as possible and dove through the door- not even slowing to check to see if some poor person was standing directly on the other side. She was seconds from entering the handicap stall- out of habit and tradition- but froze as her jittery gaze caught the little blue plaque on the door that designated that stall as special for a reason. It was like Zeus prodded her with a bolt, because she felt sick as she realized that Little had to use these handicap stalls…_

_Backing suddenly away as if burned, Molly whipped around and prepared to…she didn't know what, and caught her startled reflection in the mirror and froze._

_She looked positively insane. She didn't like this side of her._

"_God, calm down, Hooper." She said shakily to the woman staring back at her with the white rimmed eyes and bloodless cheeks. Why was she reacting like this? To a man who hurt her- really hurt her, as in physically and emotionally scarring- for no reason that she had ever found out- then again, that could be the 'dark' operating that Lestrade and Sherlock were up to. She didn't even know Boris Little, had never heard of him until she picked up the file on top of his body bag. He had no business living rent free in her head, driving her to pick up the habits of frightened children or cultivating paranoia like it was a damn crop that grew the more she fed her imagination in quiet rooms. She struggled to open body bags of new arrivals- usually doing so when the EMTs or the cops or whoever dropped it off- by herself. She hated the morgue silent. _

_She despised working late- Sherlock company or no- because what if it happened again? _

_And then she goes and sees the deplorable, pathetic condition he is in, and SHE feels bad?_

"_What the hell is wrong with me?" She snapped at mirror, glaring hard at herself for having these thoughts. The silence in the bathroom did nothing but drive her even closer to the brink. Coming here was a terrible idea. Seeing Little was an equally terrible idea._

_She needed therapy. She needed professional help because this could not be considered normal. Leaning forward until she was mere inches from the glassy surface, Molly stared hard into the brown eyes watching her right back, and tried to determine where the break in her was located._

_A thud on the door was her only warning to bottle up her own marque of unstable, as a throng of older women came chattering loudly through the doorway. They paid no heed to her as she continued to look at herself in the mirror. Or at least until a cute old lady wobbled up to the neighboring sink and 'tisked' hard at her. "Don't you worry one bit, child, you look lovely. It's this ruddy lighting that makes us all see ourselves in a bad shade."_

_Fluttering her eyes, she offered up a tired smile. "I guess you're right." Molly's voice rasped as she eased back from her intense analysis of her face and mind. _

_She quickly made to leave, uninterested, no matter how nice that old woman was, to discuss anything with anyone. Hastily abandoning the restroom, Molly had to apologize for crashing into another person right outside in the hall before she found herself tucked safely back in at her mother's side. _

_She was traumatized; it was the only rational answer her mind- and mother- could supply that made any sense. It had to be a latent trauma she had inhibited under all the other problems she had been struggling with at the time of the attack. Sherlock had provided a wonderful distraction because of his madness, and Lestrade had sent the really mucked up bodies to one of the dozen other hospital morgues in the city for a few weeks, just so she could focus on the gentler deaths brought on by poor heart history or a familial lineage of strokes. _

_Finally confronting Little- from several meters away and not speaking to him- had just agitated her mental blocks into unleashing this downpour of baggage she had no desire to deal with._

_So for the rest of the day, she had pretended to not see him propped up alongside Colin Dunn- who had noticed her immediately, the observant man that he was- and instead spent the entire trial watching either Lestrade, or the judge's white powdered wig. _

_She was worn out and brittle with the restraint brought on from keeping a breakdown hidden away by the time she returned home with her mother- the media having only swelled in her absences because those buggers must have been breeding in the azaleas and with Mr. Smither's excellent watering care to account for their numbers. _

_Her mother was worried, but Molly didn't know how to comfort her when she could barely manage to keep from shattering herself. _

_So she kindly accepted her mug of sweetened tea and a package of KitKats that her mum had thoughtfully purchased the day before, and slunk off to her room to have a nice had been the plan anyway, but by the time she had turned her stereo on, taken a roasting shower, and eaten half a bag of candy, she was too out of it to work herself into a good sob. Which was kind of a nice change of pace since she was so sick of crying all. the. time. _

_She had fallen into a fitful sleep listening to a mixed CD made for sad days and breakups and dreamed of the lab and work and oddly enough, Sherlock's coat helping her move heavy microscopes._

_So when she woke up later that night or morning- she honestly didn't care- she was properly disoriented. Sitting up quickly, she paused and listened to the sweet sound of one of her favorite songs floating sympathetically from the speakers. Looking blearily around her room, she took in the ripped apart bag of sweets and the skins of KitKat wrappers and her untouched tea. It was a few moments more before she remembered why she was not at home in her flat, and second later to remember the exact reason for her current status in life and everything._

_God, how depressing…_

_Groaning she dropped her head into her hands and let herself rock in sync with the violin and guitar music and when her song ended, she actually fumbled for the remote on her nightstand, never lifting her head, and hit repeat so she could continue to be lulled by it. _

_She thought of things and nothing at all. She wondered what Lestrade had to say, and what would not be said. She thought of Sherlock and the sweet moments where he unintentionally tried to make her feel better- because they were preciously rare and always helped brighten her days when she thought of them. She thought of her mother and sister and of days where she would not be hounded by demons._

_She dwelled briefly of Little and what she had done to him- and tried to figure out how he ended up in a wheel chair- and exactly how much blame she could truly accept as her own without her sister kicking her in the shins- because she had been 'so thrilled' when she had found out that Molly felt bad for the guy. _

_-"You chicken shit! Don't you bloody dare!" She had said in her dulcet tones that spoke volumes with warmth and affection- pure sarcasm._

_She thought of so many things her head was starting to hurt and by the fifth repetition of her song, she decided she needed to use the loo, or get a drink, or something to break the cycle._

_Moaning like it hurt, she uncurled from herself and scooted to the edge of the bed, and let her toes coil at the night chill. She had stuck a nightlight plug-in by the door that first night she stayed at her mum's that gave off enough of a glow so she didn't stub her toe on the door jamb, but not too much so she felt like a huge baby for needing one at her age. She made sure to give it a good glare when she scooted by it._

_The house was humming with nighttime noises of sighing air grates and the gentle churning of the dishwasher as she padded softly into the kitchen to scare up a glass of water…or maybe tea. Tea sounded good. She never did drink the one her mum made, and rather liked the idea of a cup._

_Filling and setting the kettle atop the range, Molly let it to its own devices as she pottered around getting a fresh mug and vanilla sugar and her special brand of Mexican chocolate infused tea leaves- something her stoutly English mum, a traditional tea purist, was frankly horrified at her drinking. Molly felt that if they made vodka infused tea, she'd have been happier, but alas, it was too late to nip a nightcap with anything stronger then tea, and she really wasn't feeling the standard tea fair would suite her iffy frame of mind. Tugging the refrigerator open, she pulled the milk out just in time as the kettle started the pre-whistle whine. She didn't want to wake her mother, who could hear the neighbors fart across the way and startle awake, so she killed the heat and poured the searing water. A spoonful- or three- of vanilla sugar, and a dash- or several- of milk and Molly was feeling a little better about the state of affairs in the world. Her tea had just enough jalapeno kick to make it something unique and as she trundled down to her room, sipping languorously at her drink, she felt the weight of the day start to ease off her shoulders. _

_She hadn't been herself- being wound tighter then a knot and emotionally unsound would do that to any girl- and it had been rough. She resided on how the guys had dumped her on her head, and how life did a fantastic job kicking her teeth with gleeful pictures as well, and how badly she had taken everything._

_Her mini-meltdown that turned into one hell of a pity parade that lasted several days. _

…_Her day at court- which was God awful in that it had made her ill thinking about having to show up and do it all again tomorrow…_

_Taking a tentative drag from her mug as she entered her room, Molly balanced precariously with her drink still pressed to her lips so she could pull the night light from the wall, casting her room into as much darkness as a windowed bedroom permitted with a neighbor's floodlight constantly popping on and off just past the blinds. She could always re-plug it later, but at that moment, she felt like she could maybe get away without it._

_She sighed easier the second it blinked out._

_Her CD had kicked over to the next song at some point and she was catching the last few lines- which was good because she was planning on sticking the thing on repeat so she could listen to _Braid's Downstream_ until she fell back asleep. _

_Shuffling over to her bed, she set her mug down, scooped up the remote and with muscle memory engrained from years of doing this at all hours of the night back in school, hit the right number and then pushed the circle button with only touch as her guide._

_The same violin guitar duet came streaming from the corner and she let her shoulders drop, and then proceeded to let gravity puller her over sideways onto her bed, twisting at the last moment to land face down in her special think position- arms flailing out near her head._

_Except she hit something that was definitely not a pillow or her bedding._

"_You are quite ridiculous, you know that?" A honey warm baritone said inches above her head, and Molly exploded up and away with a startled shriek of surprise, falling off the bed and clipping the night stand as she floundered by it._

"_What-" She scrambled around before getting to her knees to find the lamp switch closest to her, "What- what the hell, Sherlock!" She hissed as the appliance flared to life, washing her room in light. Squinting at him- draped lazily out on the other side of her queen sized bed as if he lived there- because her night vision had been slaughtered in the reveal; Molly listened feverishly for if her mother had been awakened in her commotion while gaping incredulously at him the whole time. How the devil did he get in her room and on her bed without her even noticing him? What the hell?!_

_He snorted, and she felt something tight and angry ease in her chest at seeing him. "Are you always this blindly industrious at two fifteen in the morning?"_

"_I-" She breathed heavily as her heart still hammered in her ears from the scare while she dragged herself up toward the bed side. "Am I what? Wait- never mind." Rubbing ruefully at the back of her head where she had bumped the nightstand, she let her gaze harden on his stupidly self-assured face. "What are you doing here? It's nighttime and people are trying to sleep."_

_He arched a dark brow at her, amused. "People may be, but you certainly were not. Tell me, do you fancy yourself happier from eating those disgustingly artificial chocolate sweets or is that just a substitution for comfort?"_

_What? _

_Her mind was still working on that sentence as she finally grasped the fact that Sherlock Bloody Holmes was in her bedroom, in her secure house, with his shoes on her bed. "Oh, would you get those things off my covers? You lurk around in sewers with those on and there you go propping them all over my sheets."_

"_They aren't on your bed, they are on my feet." He said and she felt her temper rekindle. _

_She huffed. "Yes, well get what's on your feet, off my bed."_

"_So you haven't answered my question." He surprised her as he kicked his pricey Italian leather shoes off like they were common flip-flops, and watched them tumbled out of sight on his side of her bed._

"_Wh-what question?" _

"_Why are you always eating these? They are repulsive." He lifted his hand and between long fingers she saw a KitKat wrapper. This was weird. How long had he been here?_

"_Tell me you did not just break into my house to ask me why I like KitKats, Sherlock, because even you are not that neurotic over something so stupid." She scrubbed a hand at her face, already feeling the work that this conversation was probably going to take deep within her tired bones._

"_I didn't just break into _your _house to ask you about your sweet preferences." He was in a cheeky mood. "I broke into your _mother's _house to ask you about your sweet preferences." She groaned loudly at his word games and flumped forward, pressing her face into the soft bedding, too fried to be dealing with his oddness this late at night. "It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be, granted its mere child's play to begin with but the media and that neighbor with the bulldog added a bit of zest to the operation." He said in what could be identified as appreciation for the not-really challenge. _

_How nice, good for him._

_She did not believe this was happening. He managed to even catch her in a moment where whipping up the rage to drop kick him verbally in the goolies was too much work. "Why did you feel the need to break and enter in the first place?" She asked of her quilt._

"_Because I'm not supposed to be seen here." _

_What? She popped her head up to look at him. "What?"_

_There! Right there, she saw it. A flicker of guilt flashed however briefly across his face- clouding steel blue eyes that looked so much darker in the room's poor lighting, but it did not erase the fact that she did see it. He was reluctant to say whatever it was that would answer her question, but she just narrowed her eyes at him. His surprise invasion of her home had blown her trajectory off track when it came to everything she had planned to yell at him the next time she saw him, and he by his own hand had rethreaded her quest for answers via slapping him silly with all the ammo she had been hording. She could feel the wave of anger that she had toiled so hard to overcome flood out all of her control. _

_He had abandoned her. Was gone in her time of need. _

_Had betrayed her and left her stripped and exposed and she…she could so kill him._

_And here he was, lounging on her bed in the middle of the night like a damn vampire in all that black he was wearing, - because she just noticed he was in something other than his tailored suits, since apparently not robbing people required dark trousers and a skin tight long-sleeved shirt with matching gloves- interrogating her about flippin' candy bars and fan-girling about break-ins?_

_Was planet Sherlock completely devoid of common sense?_

_She was going to kill him._

_She had thought things, assumed things, and he had gone and proven everything she believed about their friendship wrong in such a painful demonstration of not giving a shit that she had cried herself to sleep over it._

_But how does one articulate this to a man who was so smart he could probably MacGyver an A-bomb in his flat with just the stuff at hand, but felt happiness in others was cause for high suspicion. _

"_Sherlock…now would be a good time to explain." She said in a low voice, and she watched him still as he dipped his head, observing her._

"_Or, you could answer a few of my own inquires." His riposte had her burying her fists in the comforters. "You see there are a few things I'm unclear on."_

_She stared at him. Yeah, she was going to 'help' him along alright. "Like common sense? Common decency? How about loyalty, Sherlock, would you like me to give you a few samples for you mull over and dissect for a data analysis?" _

_He leveled his own steel blue gaze at her- the equivalent of crossing fencing foils- the pale color dimmed significantly in the buttered lighting. "I'm sensing you're displeased with me. My actions- of which you know nothing about- have-" His attempted distracting spurred her forward aggressively. _

"_You bloody didn't tell me! You never said the court case was due today and you never said one damn word about my attack having intrusive documented pictures that were going to be splashed across the sodding country! And I'm not foolish to believe for a second you didn't know!" She snapped, eyes blazing and for a second he looked just as cross before it was once again gone, making her doubt even seeing it. He was keeping a lid on that temper of his, which should have concerned her. "Do you have any idea how humiliating and…and…awful that is? Seeing my face, my battered, bloody face with soulless eyes up close? Do you not get- do you not see?" _

_He looked pissed. It was a second later that she realized he probably did know, but she wasn't about to give ground on the big genius-y dumbass._

"_You are positively apoplectic with anger about these." He told her as if she were unaware how she felt as he lifted an issue of the_ Sun_, the same one she had- whipping her head toward the opened sock drawer that also had her underwear in it, Christ Sherlock!- Molly felt like her brain was going to explode. "Good! They were an unfortunate discovery in a long line of bad decisions made by one Mark Dillions, in Haematology, who felt your hardship would someday afford him a sizable fortune if cleverly implemented. Slimly, little worm sold them to this…dog sheet for a hefty sum considering you are not a celebrity."_

_This was unexpected. She felt like he a slapped her. "M-Mark took those?" Her voice squeaked and she quickly cleared it. "But…" Why would he do such a thing? She had always gotten along with the quiet Haematologist so well. Yeah, they hadn't spoken much since Sherlock made him cry- which she had gone and profusely apologized for- but she figured it had to do with the Hospital's work load from the city and nothing personally to do with her._

_Was there a united conspiracy against people who liked Sherlock Holmes or something? Because she caught a lot of blow back for just one difficult guy. _

_This news did not sit well with her. Her job site was becoming a lot more like a battle field then a simple lab and morgue. The casualty rate was starting to worry her because it seemed to just be her!_

"_Mostly my fault I'm afraid." His rich voice was quiet, and Molly had to force her spotty attention back on him. He wasn't looking at her, however, but rather across the room at her stereo, where the last bars of her _Downstream _were loping toward the finish, large hands palmed together before his lips. "His stark disinclination toward me polluted any civility he may have possessed in dealing with those around me, and since you seemed to be of a different mind all together, his dislike carried over to you by association. An affliction my presence does have a tendency to cause."_

_She knew that, but this went beyond mere dislike of him. _

_What did this mean?_

_The silence between them was heated for several beats- and it wasn't coming from her- before she found her own voice cowering deep in her throat. "W-why didn't you tell me when you found out? Greg said you guys knew about Thursday night. I should have been informed then too." She should have been told everything, and he should have known better. Then a different thought hit her from the left. "Oh my God, I've seen Mark for months- everyday almost passing in the halls!" She buried her face in her palms. "He's had those the entire time…"_

_She listened to him shift around a bit, but didn't lift her head, too gob smacked by this news to do more than shake her head slowly._

_She heard that deep voice of his rumble before he spoke. "My fault again. I thought I could contain it before the transaction took place- senselessly easy normally- but that's where I blundered." He didn't expand on it, and Molly did not feel like pressing him because when she peeked up at him, something in the line of his body and jaw whispered of an aggression she had seen put to task too many times to ignore, and she had long learned to trust her instincts when it came to the consulting detective. "Five minutes, and every media publisher in the country had them. Damage control was near impossible. Lestrade was supposed to call." The way he was evading her eyes was nagging at her, however. She had never known Sherlock Bloody Holmes to avoid a confrontation- not that this was the type he was used to because there was no criminals, or irritating cops, or lackluster witnesses in her room. Just the two of them._

_Cocking her head, she could see a muscle tick once, twice, on his jaw and suddenly she knew exactly what she was witnessing- which made her feel like a moron at the same time because he had just told her that he failed. This meant very little to her because she had seen him fail at things before- insanely rare as those instances were and she included sleeping on that list- this translated into not getting her hopes up that he understood where she was coming from._

_He was too controlling to feel anything but regret at messing up such a, according to him, easy case. Sighing, she brushed a hand across her forehead, reluctantly coming to terms with him just never getting it. Until he opened his mouth and said. _

"_It was my fault you were taken advantage of, and that's something I cannot forgive." He told his stomach and she about fell over._

_That was Sherlock's personal brand of remorse if she'd ever seen it. _

_Maybe there was hope with him._

_Still. "You should have told me. The second you knew." She was not letting this go. She needed him to know this, to understand this wasn't a game with her life as pawn to be manipulated without her at least being aware. _

"_It would have changed nothing." The baritone dropped into the lower registers and she felt her improving attitude deteriorate right alongside it. _

_Spoke to soon._

"_For who? Me or you? Because I did not enjoy being harassed on the street by a guy and his camera. Nor did I find any delight in stepping off the train and seeing hundreds of magazines with my- my….with my personal business plastered up for the world to nose at, Sherlock. It was humiliating!"_

_His face did that thing were it turned ugly and he seemed ready to explode. "It was inevitable- you knowing or not would not have affected a different outcome."_

"_God, could you be crueler about this?" Her heart was in her voice and he snapped his head around to look at her with wide steel blue eyes. "This is a lot more than a failed case, you know. To me it was desertion. You left me as blind and defenseless as I was the night Little cracked me across the glass windows in the morgue. At least if I had known, I could have regrouped ahead of time, told my family, and had maybe you and Lestrade to go to for advice, but you took all of that from me and for what? To save me a few hours of blissful ignorance?" So far that had been the only excuse her naïve little brain could conjure. It rather made her angrier than before._

_He continued to not say anything and she just shook her head at him, disappointed that he wasn't getting it, that for all his intelligence and bragging about everyone seeing but not observing the motives of people, she still had to spell it out for him. "It was like I was attacked all over again. And then you and Lestrade…it was a betrayal. You deliberately kept this from me, Sherlock, and a whole slew of nobodies knew before I did."_

_His jaw started to move but she wasn't finished and holy cow did this last bit take a chunk of courage she wasn't totally sure she had enough of. "And to make matters worse…_you_-" She jabbed a finger into his thigh- "were gone. I thought…I thought we were friends and yes I was angry and hurt by this but I would have been better suited to dealing with all of it if you had just pulled your normal loggerhead routine and just been there for me, but you didn't even seem to care."_

_Her heart was pounding in her ears, and she could feel the flush of her cheeks as she finally caved under her own self-induced pressure and sat back on her heels, eyes firmly locked on her covers as she listened to him heave a sigh as if exhausted with her demands of friendship._

_He was such an ass._

"_It wouldn't have made any difference my 'caring' about you or not." He said. "My being there would not have stopped people from talking." That hurt. A lot. She flinched and could feel the high sting way up in her nose, heralding the oncoming waterworks over a man that had caused too many tears already._

"_So you chose to abandon me?" He had better tread carefully, or she was going break even more…_

"_I chose the correct decision based on the data gathered. Sentimental crockery had nothing to do with it."_

_She just stared at her knees, not even trying to hide the suffering he was layering onto her. And he, being the thoughtful, well-adjusted man that he most certainly was not said nothing more. She should have expected this…_

_But it was a bit too much on top of every other let down she had experienced over the last week and today in particular. _

"_Sherlock," Her voice wobbled as she closed her eyes to keep him from seeing everything- boring open book or not, she couldn't do this. "If you've finished trampling all over this thing I so foolishly believed existed, the door is behind me. Lock it, please." She dismissed him. "And leave my magazine."_

"_Why do you think I 'abandoned you?" His voice was brittle with an emotion she couldn't pin down, but it had no trouble budging out the end of her discharge like she was just tossing out random suggestions. _

_It also caught her off guard. "What?" She dragged her head back up._

_He was x-raying her again, eyes cool and clear and guarded. "I did not abandon you." He said it this time as a statement and she felt like she missed a stair. "I'm failing to see where my physical locale has any relevance to the situation as a whole, Molly. It wasn't my life that was cut wide open."_

_There he goes again…_

_It was like a never ending story, a circle, and he was an idiot. "Because you are supposed to be my friend- there! Stop making that face you, tosser! You held my head up out of toilet and took care of me a bunch of times and I provide you room and board at the lab and cater to your antics- friends! That's called friendship on Earth, Sherlock!"_

_He was shaking his head. "Lestrade said you wouldn't talk to him." Yeah, so?_

"_I was angry, I still am! You guys pulled the wool over my eyes and I got hurt because of it. I earned my right to pitch a bitch!"_

_He groaned and rolled his head, muttering before looking at her. "You are full of contradictions. You want your friends around yet you wouldn't take their calls? You need them, but you refused to have Lestrade over? Did you scramble your brains at some point in the last seven days?"_

_She prayed for patience. "Sherlock, it's the idea of not being alone, that as soon as I licked my wounds and cried myself out-" She watched his face cloud at this point, "- that I could still come to you guys and know you still cared for me- that you never stopped caring despite evidence to the contrary! It's pure sentiment! Affection! It's the idea that I will always have people that will have my back when the world upends I'm down on my luck."_

_He was listening, but she wondered at how much was being instantly deleted to make room for other useless things he deemed prudent like the various varieties of tobacco ash he had been collecting for who knew what unfathomable reason. "Irrational." He said finally, but not unkind. "Pure sentiment, Molly. It doesn't change the reality that I never left, I just wasn't _here_."_

_There was a huge concession in that sentence that would take a couple more days to unwind and fully comprehend, but for now it eased a throbbing ache she had been staggering under for days. "I just wanted to know that you still cared, that you hadn't fed me to the wolves because it wasn't worth your time or energy expenditure." She sniffled, swiping at her cheeks as a few tears escaped here and there. "Pure sentiment that I needed. Reinforcement." This was risky, saying this stuff to him- to anyone. One, because he was a man- and they tended to spook when she had tried things like this in that past with them, granted she wasn't dating Sherlock, but he was as iffy as every other Y chromosome carrier she had encountered. On the other hand, he responded better to pure, blunt honesty then most people on the street. He liked flouncy word play, but only if he initiated it, and right now, that was not what they were doing._

"_Ridiculous." He mumbled gently and she just shook her head, suddenly tired beyond measure as the anger in her sluggishly ebbed away- it would probably be back, but for the time being, the respite was a welcome relief._

"_It's the reason I about begged for Lestrade to sit with me today- even if I am still hurt by this flagrant mishandling of my personal business- I knew he would stand shoulder to shoulder with me." That's where her trust in _him_ seemed to flag, and she had a feeling he knew it too._

_And he wasn't all that keen at being second to Lestrade at something._

_Sherlock grunted before crossing his arms in a huff. "Yes, he was rather gallant wasn't he?" He said prissily and she rolled her eyes before pausing._

_He was starting to show his spines, bothered by something and Molly wondered at the wording. "What you were watching the telly coverage?" Dick…could have at least lurked in person…_

"_I was there." He thumbed his nose. "I told you I'm not supposed to be seen."_

_She felt like she missed something rather important at some interval along the way. "What are you on about?"_

"_Mycroft has taken it upon himself to be my overlord and disciplinarian for…a past transgression that went a little too far." He said delicately and she groaned, but at her questioning look, he just shook his head. "It's not really important, just complicates things for a while, so put it from your thoughts for now. As soon a Little is stuffed away, everything will be right as rain."_

"_A little late of him to try and bring you to heel, but okay." She conceded to his wish not to pry as she shifted her weight on her heels. Her legs were falling asleep. "But I didn't see you today."_

"_You missed me." He said a little too smugly, and something familiar clicked into place making her stare flatly at him._

"_Is that why Anthea, or whoever, kept interfering with my attempts to find a different ride?" She asked as she gave up her uncomfortable roost and crawled onto her bed before she started rubbing feeling back into her lower legs. If this had been any other conversation, with any other person- or man- she would probably have stuttered herself into a faint at having him on her bed right out of the blue- because she was about as smooth as cobbled street and way out of practice- but this was Sherlock, and he never gave two shits about decorum or propriety and only sighed when she did because that wasted time or something. It was strangely freeing._

_Plus, he didn't look like he was planning on going anywhere anytime soon and she didn't fancy being stuck down on the cold hard floor. He just crossed his ankles and snuggled down further before he ruffled his messy, dark hair- a sign that he was restless about something- "Among other things yes. Took you bloody long enough to get out there, by the way."_

_She would have plenty of time to be slightly mortified later that he heard her moping over his absence- he was too high on himself, the prat. "Didn't realize I had you in the car or I would have made you wait longer. Post pone the inevitable encounter with Little." She shuddered, the silent horror at seeing him surging back into her as just speaking that name enflamed the thing she had seen earlier that day, making her reach for the blanket edge Sherlock was so rudely sitting on. _

_He was silent as she tugged pointed on the blanket in a not so subtle message for him to move- her thin t-shirt and shorts were perfect for balmy summer nights, but right now, she wanted more warmth. She yanked the cover harder and he just frowned at her, apparently annoyed with her fidgeting._

"_You feel responsible for him." He said in that deep voice that chased her thoughts away until only the round resonance of it filled her skull. She needed to find a deterrent for that. "His appearance distressed you."_

_She didn't look at him. "You were there too?" She probed just to avoid talking about what he just asked. "Or is this just another one of your magic tricks?" She knew how much he hated it when people called his deducing the obvious a 'magic trick', the oddball._

_He glowered at her. "You must be blind because I bloody walked right in front of you!" Poor ego of his must have just taken a beating. "And it isn't a 'magic trick', you know this."_

"_I was distracted by Lestrade-"_

_He waved his hand, cutting her off. "You're lies need work as well. We're going to have to fix that, but we're wandering off the reservation here. You about had a melt down on seeing him rolled in, the crippled idiot. And then again in the ladies- except that time you didn't quite make it into your favorite crying stall." She just sighed at him knowing that- him and his blatant sign allergy- she hoped she accidently stepped on his foot when she ran into him outside the bathroom door, but she couldn't recall exactly if she had. She also remembered moving for the thin, 'older' man who cleared his throat. "You have no reason to have regrets concerning anything about him." He snapped suddenly, startling her with a jerk. Her brown eyes found his piercing steel blues, and she felt herself start to curl in on herself._

"_Did you not see what I did to him?" She asked and for a second she thought he was going to shake her with the way he seemed to puff up and press back into the bed pillows with a determined control and a purse of the lips._

"_Did you see what _he_ did to _you_?" He threw in her face and she shrank back further from his cool glare. "This poor excuse of reading-"He shook the _Sun_ at her and the glossy cover caught the light and her bloody face. "-managed to capture a truly accurate portrayal of his work, Molly. You of all people should not question this." That barb hurt a lot more then she wanted to acknowledge. _

_She felt her throat close up, and her heart squeeze in her chest at the memories just seeing her photo evoked. "I know." She whispered at him._

"_Then why are you entertaining this guilt?" He wanted to know and like everything that piqued his interest, it was like holding back a wave with just her bare hands. With him, sometimes it was just easier to answer._

_So she struggled to put a voice to it. "He…His life is ruined." He scoffed so hard she thought he might turn inside-out, and she just scooted a little further away from him and his judgment- because she was doing a good enough job abusing herself thank you! "Face destroyed to the point where he is on an iron lung and in a wheel chair, and I'm the cause of it? I'm not Little, Sherlock, I take no pleasure in seeing people hurt by my hand- even if they one-hundred percent had it coming and not even Jesus would feel bad for them."_

_He slapped a palm to his forehead, as if her reasons were just too preposterous to actually even consider. "You are so nice it's stupid. You're stupid, why do I talk to you?" _

_She felt herself bristle at that, which was better than letting her feelings be bruised because he was being his usual self. "And you're a complete tosser and an asshat!" She grumped at him, yanking hard on the cover and he just raised an aristocratic eyebrow at both her language and blanket pinning- still not moving!_

"_Asshat? Stop adopting Lestrade's speech patterns. It makes him feel like he's won something." _

_She growled at his continual refusal to be nice and move and not pick on her in her fragile state. "Yes, asshat. Lestrade hit pay dirt with that one because it's dead accurate." She mumbled something intangible even to her ears before giving up getting the cover unstuck from under him. Heavy git. So she squirmed her way between the sheets as best she could, hand brushing the forgotten _Sun_ that was lying between them. "How long have you been here anyway?" She asked as she stretched for the tabloid, only to have him pull it completely from her reach._

"_This is trash. Why do you have this?" He countered instead, which told her he had been skulking around her room like a spider for a little too long. If she weren't so used to his signature invasiveness, if she hadn't known him for almost three years, she would have been freaked out. But this was Sherlock- the guy ticked to his own beat and she had spent many long nights with him before- it sounded almost romantic, except he was kind of batty and they bonded over opened cadavers. "I'm taking this with me, you don't need it."_

"_I'll just buy another one." She shrugged, just to cheese him off._

_Which it did, and he promptly had fit, expounding on why she would do that to herself as well as supporting the dolts who ran such publications full of rubbish and buffoonery and on and on he went. Working himself into such a lather of outrage that she felt the ice around her heart start to melt._

She had stopped paying attention to what he was saying at some point, and just listened to the warm baritone of his voice- something that he had been thankfully graced with- and she could remember how it eased worries she didn't even know she had because in all the madness and pain and public embarrassment, she had forgotten a bedrock trait of his.

He was rough, out of practice, and prone to prickish moment's personally signature of Sherlock Holmes, but in that one visit he had managed to demonstrate several important things.

He was good at hiding in plain sight. He had broken a law at some point and was being punished by Mycroft in a weird way- which wasn't so much of a surprise and explained his absences but not what he actually did- Lestrade only knew part of it, but said Sherlock had his number and that he couldn't say without fear of retaliation via two Holmes- which was quite vexing in its mystery because what could he have possibly done that affected her? Because she knew she was involved at some point- she remembered frantically calling the morgue to make sure all the bodies that were supposed to be there were there- and that he did indeed care.

He cared enough to risk punishment- what deportation? Jail time? Community service by reading to the blind?- by visiting her. He cared that she was upset- but he was a fundamental tosser and complete crap at being a consoling friend- he cared that she hated herself for ruining Little's quality of life- actually he was livid about that but she couldn't stop feeling how she felt on that subject.

She had forgotten. And it had confused him because she had already known how he worked, how he was wired concerning such things. _"I'm failing to see where my physical locale has any relevance to the situation as a whole, Molly."_

Sherlock Holmes used actions to speak louder than words because even he knew he sucked at communication- oh he could talk just fine, spin webs, and catch people in the act of lying with just a turn of phrase, a wrong verb tense, or just by the way they enunciated their sentences- but matters of the heart, of what was personally important to him, he bungled.

His possessiveness, his need to know what was going on at all times with the people in his life spurred him to action- so he used his talents at stalking, hiding, and breaking and entering, to tell her- probably didn't even realize he was doing it either because he seemed a little muddled when she eventually realized it that night.

Sherlock didn't view his absence as a betrayal because to him, things transcended location, location, location…surprisingly. He was fine- and by his narrow definition of how the world should work, so was everyone else- as long as he knew what people were doing, where they were, and so on. To him, his lack of 'being there' was immaterial because he still cared regardless of where he was at what point at any given time. He just had to know that they were alright- emotionally sound was questionable but it was Sherlock, credit had to be given where it was due in that department.

Yes he wasn't her shoulder to cry on. Yes, he screwed up several things with Lestrade and hurt her by default- which he did feel bad about because he did that hovering thing of his where he watches her every move as she went back to her life at work, or shopping, or whatever after the court proceedings for the day concluded, from whatever vantage point he had assumed to keep from having to pick up litter or make license plates because his brother had his number if he stepped out of line.

He was trying.

He never stopped being there for her.

She had just overlooked it.

"_It doesn't change the reality that I never left, I just wasn't _here_."_

* * *

So tell me...what do you think Sherlock did.

PLEASE IGNORE MISTAKES! 44 PAGES I HATE IT!


	6. Chapter 6

**EDIT: So sorry I HAD to fix some mistakes. I couldn't handle how stupid they were!**

AN- And so we continue with my silly little story. I don't know if it's just this story, the fandom, or what exactly, but I have to say, I've gotten some incredible feedback from you all. Well spoken and insightful- like an English college course my friend said.

Y'all are the best. To guest- I understand. And too all you little anonymous creepers floating past- Thanks for reading, because I know you're there!

_ITALICS**** days gone by_

MISTAKES! THEY HAPPEN!

**How Lucky You Are**

By: Berouge

* * *

Little's conviction and sentencing took almost a week to find him guilty- Sherlock was distinctly miffed it took so long to cycle a high profile case properly and fairly through the justice systems many checks and balances. Something about the incompetency rate in the courtroom being spectacularly apparent and that Lestrade should stop leading by example. There were only five days of in-house proceedings but she easily recounted intimately dealing with the fallout from the entire ordeal some three to four weeks after the gavel rapped the wood and she learned firsthand that re-achieving anonymity was a lot harder than she would have previously assumed it to be, especially considering she was fundamentally a nobody in this town- preferred pathologist for the Yard aside, her job didn't add much weight to her public persona. Her pre-trial, simple days of migrating to and from work or the shops, spending time with her mum or Tara, and babysitting one devious Sherlock Holmes so he didn't drive all of Serious Crimes to drink themselves into a comatose, were abolished for ones that included almost _Mission Impossible_ like stealth to keep from having some random person make the connection to her and the 'acid eaten bloke'. It happened though, and she found a speedy getaway the most effective cure for avoiding unwanted confrontations. People were entitled to their opinions- just as she was equally entitled to wish them ill-will for describing to her their feelings on an incident that in no way included them on any level outside being maybe in the same city as she- this was only the case when they tilted a little too far into camp Little.

She was as biased as they came.

There were folks who approached her… strangers who made contact- which Sherlock distinctly had not liked, but this was a mere mile marker on the road of knowing Sherlock and Molly could fill libraries with fat books and pamphlets in copious detail on things Sherlock did not like. Funnily enough, the stuff he did like could as well, but in all probability would be banned from the country.

His aversion to these occurrences stemmed from Molly's own reaction to them- if they upset her, he suffered as a result because she was less inclined to cater to him and his obstreperous neediness. Mean people were not nearly as common as the nice folks who genuinely approved, but the bad moments always seemed to override the good experiences in her day- try as she might to not let them. She would just replay them over and over until she felt completely miserable about some people thinking so poorly of her- and it shouldn't matter, but for some stupid, stupid, stupid reason, knowing that someone viewed her as a bigger monster than Little stirred a deep inner sadness she did not know how to vanquish.

"_They don't matter, Molly." Tara's voice snapped heatedly near her ringing ears. "They have no idea what the hell they are talking about!"_

"_I know." She said in a quaking voice, hands trembling her sandwich into pieces, face hot and eyes stinging despite how hard she was trying to keep those exact symptoms from happening. "I know."_

_Tara just watched her, face contorting as she struggled to remain seated at their little table instead of rampaging across the sub shop and tackling the three boys loudly discussing Molly's role in the 'Fucked up state of that fella's face, thanks to that one cunt'. It was absolutely appalling and only became increasingly more abhorrent as they quibbled over it._

"_I'm killing them-" Tara moved to surge to her feet and Molly dropped the remains of her forgotten meal in favor of dragging her friend back into her seat. _

"_Please!" She said in a hushed, straining voice. "I don't think they know I'm here and I'd like to keep it that way."_

"_This should not be left to continue! It's not right!" Tara venomously stated, moving to pry upset fingers from around her arm. _

_That may be the case, but Molly had no desire to weather that storm at this moment, in one of her favorite eateries, on what started off as such a pleasant day after struggling through so many God awful ones the last week and a half. "They are entitled to have a say." She finally managed around the engorged lump in her throat that she was almost positive was her courage trying to hide behind the yellow bits in her gut. _

"_What- that's the stupidest-" Tara's brow slammed low over her flashing baby blues. "No." With that, she blasted off so violently from their table, Molly scrambled to keep the whole thing from toppling onto the floor._

_What followed was like a Broadway musical- minus the music and doubled up on the arm waving dramatics- complete with raised voices and unintentional props via one wickedly implemented pint of _Hawaiian Punch_ that managed to soak two table's occupants, and Tara's sparkling pink nails attached to her accurately aimed hand which connected so soundly with the most vulgar of the Three Stooges that his head almost spun clear around._

_And Molly just watched, in a trance, as Tara's assault continued in spectacular fashion, only prodded into moving when she heard the owner of the shop place a hurried call into the police- she had no intention of going anywhere in the back of a cop car after the Hellish week she had just endured mucking around in the justice system._

_Collaring a shrieking Tara, she worked to bodily lug the smaller girl from the eatery, eyes of the other patrons firmly glued to them as they booked it down the street and dove into one of the many alleyways like a couple of hooligans- which is what they probably were at this point. Tara had regained forward mobility and cooled her jets enough that she was able to move without assistance, so together they hurried as fast as possible back across the neighborhood to the sanctuary of St. Bart's._

_Gulping down air as if they weren't planning on making it anymore, Molly sagged against the wall in reception, face sweating from the exertion put forth in her flimsy ballet flats- because she was not autopsying anyone that day- and a highly impractical skirt. _

"_Oh, shit." Tara wheezed, doubled over, "I broke a heel!" _

_Molly coughed a weak laugh. "You just slapped three guys around like a harassed mother and ran over cobbles and brick back across London so as to not get picked up for assault, only to be concerned about your shoes?"_

"_They're Christian Louboutin!" She moaned as she slipped her stone gray pump, with the shock of cherry red on the sole, off as gently as she could. "Oh what I have I done to you!" She cooed sadly at her shoe like it was a fallen soldier, while an incredulous Molly looked on, trying to repress how impressed she was that Tara managed to run so well in three inch heels in the rough terrain of London's back streets and passages._

_When Tara started stroking the heel in such a desolate manner, Molly lost it._

_She laughed until she cried. _

She even chortled about it when a curious Lestrade put in an appearance some two days later, having finally heard about the scuffle in the sub shop from the bullpen's version of the grape vine- someone's friend happened to recognize Molly and that's how the DI even knew about it. She didn't admit to everything, but she didn't think he would have done anything about it anyway- Lestrade was a bit of a push over where she was concerned, as he should be.

Not that she was out committing crimes or anything, and it had been Tara who started the fight.

Sherlock- who, on that day, of all the days he spent doing whatever he did during trial week, had selected to descend from the spires of Gotham-London to play nerd like normal except he was still on probation and had to make due within the realm of her good graces- had been affixed to his microscope during the visit and had not said one word as Lestrade tried to wrangle the series of events from her. Molly had managed to get over the sandwich shop debacle well enough thanks in large part to Tara beating the ever loving crap out of three guys twice her size in heels; props to the receptionist, as even Wade was mesmerized by the story- after he had his own hissy fit that his tiny girlfriend was engaging in three on one brawls without him. So Molly hadn't felt too inclined to rehash the full story's dialogue or how upset she had really been.

It was funny, and could still make her laugh to this very day when it was brought up in conversation.

When Lestrade finally tossed in the towel, he gave her a good squeeze and ambled out the double gray doors, which pulled the trigger on Sherlock's loaded gun, he had at half cock the second he sensed a disturbance in the Force. He deduced the entire episode without lifting his eyes from the eyepiece or raising his voice and Molly just stared at him from over her blood slides, reluctantly floored by his talent even though she was very well versed at these things by this point. How did he know she had not wanted to confront the three jerks?

_-"I would say that was amazing as always, but you called me names and that's very rude." _

"_You're too irrational. You cry all the time over things that don't matter- like little cretins with rudimentary aptitudes in forming sentences used in expressing their half-witted opinions."_

He was right, but she would as soon drink the HIV positive blood samples in front of her then acknowledge him. Because he was a unpleasant git that happened to be always right and life was never fair with him.

And so what if she cried!? Things were stressful right now and she had needed relief somehow. Girls needed to cry every now and then- just as they needed at least two hugs a day to survive, but that was neither here nor there and his head would implode if she said that to him.

Still, some days were much better than others. During the trial, and the ensuing week after its conclusion, Molly had been hounded by hoards of people- and most, bless them, just wanted to tell her 'good job', which always made her twitch, but not as badly as when fellow _survivors_- some news anchor had used that title when discussing the court proceedings in reference to her, and she rather preferred it to 'victim' as it seemed less crippling- had started coming out of the wood work at the most random moments to approach her.

It was unexplainably comforting to know that there were other people out there that knew exactly where she was coming from and that recognized her struggle so well they were driven to reach out to her, to share with her their own tests and tribulations- and most of these people, she had jarringly discovered, had the bitter misfortune to go without justice.

They suffered in silence.

It just made Molly grudgingly grateful of her own trial, even with the parasitic media dogging her heels for weeks and placing a veritable target on her back for goons and trolls to snap nasty things at just to get a rise from her- these were awful because they _always_ managed to get under her skin- despite Sherlock's pompous lectures- which officially nixed her fantasies of ever being a movie star because she couldn't handle the near constant attention, it was too much.

The first few times she stepped out to run errands the first week, Tara had glued herself to her side when Molly had haltingly explained to her that she needed provisions- thankfully- because people stared and talked and a drunk guy actually said something hurtful that made her want to cry- because she wasn't as strong as she freaking wished and for some reason her feelings continually rebelled when she wanted nothing more than to just shrug stuff off. Sherlock said callous and tactless things all the time, and she shrugged that crap off like water on a windshield. She was less intimidated by SHERLOCK HOLMES- who made grown men and jaded criminals froth and scream and rage like tired children- than Frank Fartknocker the local hobo!

Anyway, Tara politely directed him to 'die in a fire' before they made a quick exit, Molly all but staggering under the collective scrutiny of the thronged people loitering around the exit like zombies.

That was her first real experience with the public outside of the mailed post and the telly's buffering lens of the media- unsurprisingly it had been horrible.

So, she remembered Tara calling in reinforcements and had easily wrangled Wade into going with them from then on when she had to run errands those first two weeks because he was a big muscular guy that looked like he probably engaged in illicit underground bare knuckled fights when he wasn't holding shopping baskets full of shampoo, tampons, and the newest issues of _Cosmo_ and _Vogue_. Even blatantly reading said _Cosmo's_ in the center of the supermarket- for the simple reason that he wanted to and was too comfortable with himself to care what anyone might think- while she and Tara inspected produce and pondered potatoes, because he just seemed to realize the filthy underbelly of women's magazines were rife with written graphic porn and insider tips.

Wade made everything look manly.

Enough so that she was left in relative peace from gossipers and douchebags- because even they were smart enough to consciously avoid the one lumberjack looking man intently doing the personality quiz in the back of a publication with the likes of _Beyoncé,_ make-up guidelines, and sexy tone-up advice littering the front cover.

Wade was the best, and Molly was so jealous and happy that Tara had ensnared him- at least she could swoon from a distance among other perks.

However, Wade's presences could only repel so much.

It was odd and uncomfortable even though most people were really wonderful about the whole ordeal- expressing concern or support for her- it was like she had cancer and suddenly the people of London all gave a collective shit about her business. But it was still…it wasn't normal. No one should find her, little ol' Molly Hooper, that fascinating while she was waiting in line at the bank.

The attention wasn't what she would have expected- neither good nor bad- in that people reached out to her in ways that made her contemplate heavily on the intimate link complete strangers _could_ share with one another without fear of judgment. It was the strangest phenomenon, one that even made Sherlock sit up and take notice- he had spent arduous amounts of time stripping secrets from people, and yet here they were dumping them as easy as breathing on her shoulders, not that it mattered because he could extract them with just a glance, but it was the principle of loose lips that boggled the mind for him.

Especially over such highly personal things. He muttered continuously about how people lied over everything- yet he also reminded her that she had to get better at it or she'd be left in the dust. His oddness knew no ethical bounds…

But these people, they held nothing back- or so it felt. Things that they probably wouldn't even tell their own families or friends; familiar, private, and painful bits of a singular incident, a few chance moments in time that altered someone, literally changed intrinsically who they were because of it.

Molly felt- and she had spent considerable amounts of time trying to find a better answer but so far…this is all she could come up with that made any modicum of sense- that because of how the media so ruthlessly publicized her attack, that people sensed that maybe, if anyone could understand what they had gone through, or were still plodding over, she could. She tried not to think of how narcissistic that might sound, but she had been unwilling to ask around to validate her thoughts at the time- no one else had needed to know her feelings on this matter- but she was starting to seriously consider maybe questioning Lestrade about it since he had the most experience handling people under trying circumstances. She fleetingly- nanoseconds, as she briefly took flight of her common sense- considered asking her other pal Sherlock, but it only took one remembered incident of him insulting the ever loving crap out of a distraught family who were suddenly overflowing with remorse and repetitive outbursts about how their hoodlum uncle was 'such a wonderful person'- the guy shot a Yarder in the shoulder after a mugging spree that included several elderly victims and young mothers with babies over the course of three months to supply a drug addiction- and while she may not have been convinced of their plight, Sherlock's beat down was poorly timed, as they were _in the morgue_, and highly inappropriate, being they were _in the sodding morgue_- she would go to her grave secretly agreeing with every word he said, however.

She could be such a terrible person…

Sherlock might have a fabulous insight to the inner workings of people and situations, but he did not care for the reality that people were sharing their _feelings _within perceptible range of him and therefore, would be totally useless for _helpful_ advice in dealing with oversharing people. Granted he'd probably have a veritable feast for thought, but she wasn't inclined to line up for her own lynching. He'd be a prat and she would be driven to protect those people who were mere faces and stories to her from his prattishness and then HE would get even more huffy and difficult-

She wasn't a complete moron.

So she muddled through it as best as she could, head held high like her mother told her. It was an unexpected burden. One she found she didn't really know how to truly feel about, but never did she attempt to even think about pushing away those few that reached out to her when they approached her on the train, at the bank, or in the stores. Sherlock was getting antsy about that too, because he was still pulling a Batman and being the creeper she deserved, if not needed- she would have been touched if he didn't belittle the happiness out of her when he eventually popped up later to address her about it in his best derisive tone of voice, and that was before Lestrade mentioned in an offhand kind of way that he did the same exact thing to serial killers.

How nice of him. The sentiment was so 'thick' she could see through it.

Oddball.

He said she was opening herself up too much for too little gain, but how could she turn her back on the older woman at the doctor's office when she had gone in for her yearly, that had hugged her in tears over her triumph of Little since she had been denied her own for over sixty years, or the flamboyant gentleman who gripped her ruined hand on the Tube and said he understood and supported her before slipping her a card for an anonymous self-help group that met once a month for people who have been attacked at random- he showed her the beginning of a huge, ugly scar that started at his waste and vanished up under his shirt- she had seriously considered going too, because she wasn't kidding about the possibility of needing therapy. The ghosts got to her and she was quickly learning that her mother and Tara and Lestrade could only help her so far. Sherlock either distracted or hindered depending on his time of the month, the moon phase, and what sort of hamburger the guy down the street was eating.

It was just a little daunting making that first step, however much she would like to have a cushion group of understanding souls to chat with and not worry about concerning with her own baggage- like her mother, sister, or Tara.

She would never forget the simple, raw, and unexpected conversation with a girl around her age at the supermarket, where she had recognized Molly from the blasted _Sun_ issue- which Sherlock had indeed burgled from her mums despite her wishes. It was the sort of thing that stuck with a person, and Molly was confident that when she was ninety-five, she would still be able to accurately recall the haunted look in that young girl's face- because Molly remembered looking in mirrors and seeing it echoed in her own eyes after leaving the hospital those first few days. She didn't get her name only that her ex had roughed her up so badly over something so inconsequential- it wasn't worth detailed recollection- in their shared home, that the physical and emotional scars held her back. Kept her from doing the things she used to enjoy- it was odd how the mind, already tortured enough with the actual experience, chose to keep shooting holes into everything else around that memory until the person felt like an empty husk.

And Molly remembered how they bent their heads together, both observing the ice cream selections with seasoned cynicism as they tallied pros and cons, and compared nightmares and cures- which was shockingly easy to do with a person that did not know anything more about her than that she had a sweet tooth, needed toilet paper, and that she had crossed out multiple food items on her grocery list and replaced them with just 'wine' circled three times in two different colors.

These encounters were deeply personal- shared confidences that Molly had no intention of repeating to anyone because they were hers now to keep and treasure and ponder- even to this day she valued her collection of life stories. _So of course_ Sherlock had noticed, but she had refused to tell, and his shoddy scunner attitude on the subject did nothing to sway her because she was allowed to curate her own secrets as she had so very few from him- he was too good with that deducing of his, it was getting desperately ridiculous- he even knew what type of underwear preference she had! For a guy she was not dating…that was pretty close.

Shame it was Sherlock- quite-possibly- asexual- Holmes.

Figures…it was just her luck.

"_Why are you allowing this to continue?" She jumped, startled out of her little inner reflection by his sensuous baritone washing over her shoulder. How the devil did he manage surprise her in such a busy spot as Long Lane's Tube entrance? There were people and cars buzzing everywhere; was she that out of it? Twirling around, she barely kept herself from careening into the metal handrail that kept balance challenged klutz's like herself from diving down the cement steps. Of course he just watched her little show, unmoved and making fun of her hard core with that slight smirk of his. Straightening herself out, she adjusted her light cardigan and tried to summon as much dignity as possible. Then she looked up at him and her thoughts disassembled themselves because he was wearing a red button down under his black suit jacket and she remembered the Shirt- a useless talent she was born with combined with a memory that was a bit too much to ever forget._

"_I-I'm sorry? Allowing what?"_

"_This trivial nonsense with every random person and their sob story." He sounded disdainful, but Molly had just barely enough Sherlock exposure to Sherlock Conversations to hear the confusion in the background. She decided he would have trouble understanding purposeless interaction- pure emotional triggers- with people she would in all likeness never see ever again. He didn't even connect at such levels with familiar faces like she had with that last man._

_But how to tell that to him?_

_He was no stranger to self-conjured night terrors that swelled a level of accepted abuse upon a person, but she wasn't entirely sure if he would assent to her rationalization that some folks liked to discuss these things with other human beings and actually want a reply. Not just skulls and goldfish- no matter how good of a morale booster Aloysius's excitement at seeing her was._

_Sherlock was still stubbornly a one way tram on Discussion Drive._

"_Shared nightmares are a great equalizer." She settled on with a hapless shrug. "Plus…I could never ignore them." Them, as in those that silently pled for acceptance, assurance, or the knowledge that they were not truly alone in their struggles, that other's fought similar battles on other fields all over the spectrum, but she didn't give that soul to her sentence because knowing him, he'd probably attempt exorcising it back to whatever Hell he assumed it came from._

_He stepped closer as a large woman wielding a heavy looking bag came swinging past them. "It's a waste of your time and energy. And most of the time, you insist on dwelling on that rubbish until you are most unpleasant to be around."_

_Ah, his understanding attitude and support for her never ceased to astound her- what a turd. "Thanks, Sherlock." She frowned up at him. Did he just realize he described himself in a way?_

"_It's just an observation."_

_She opened her mouth to point out her own little observation but thought better of it, and sighed instead. "What are you doing here? Lestrade said he had a case, and yet here you are." She waved a careless hand at him as if he didn't know he was standing before her, picking on her._

"_Solved it." He caught her hand- the same one still clutching the small card her last impromptu counseling session partner had given her, the one that also carried scars on his person- and with warm, quick fingers, relieved her of it. _

"_Hey!" She squawked at him. "That's mine!" She was so stealing something from him the next time she had the chance- start her own little pile and see how long he it took him to notice. She would just ignore the fact that he'd probably know immediately and that her resistance was futile._

_His eyes quickly swept over its contents before turning it over and cocking that infernal eyebrow. "A phone number from an obviously gay man in a group like this? Better not make an offer to this one for a date." _

_Oooo, that was mean- well it stung that was for damn sure. "Oh, well, I'll just have to skip to the passionate pig sex in the hall after our little cry session, shall I?" She snapped loudly at him, ticked he would say something so rotten to her about a nice person only trying to help, before remembering she was on a busy sidewalk and three old ladies were gaping in revulsion at her a few paces away._

_Oh, bugger! Oh, My God!_

_He even seemed slightly taken aback- Sherlock Blood Holmes!- at the blunt and bawdy thing that just sprung so vociferously from her mouth. Not that he ever said stuff…like…like that- he could do loutish with the best, but he wrapped it in that posh voice and a certain measure of high intelligence- but, oh, sweet Jesus she was turning into a man! A Sherlockesque loose lipper! Soon the filter instilled in her by her mum, prep school, and polite society would erode away and she would just be a dimmer version of him! "E-excuse me." She whispered, too thunderstruck with her internal realization and heated embarrassment to project her voice above the roaring traffic. Reaching up, she tried to pluck the card from his grip, but he was still perfectly functional, and all but made the card disappear into his suit pocket. "I kinda need that." Please, have mercy! Those old grandmas were still watching her with such offended disapproval- did she know one?! Staring hard at them, it was a tense few seconds before she was assured that she did not, in fact, recognize them._

_That would have just been more awkward and horrible._

"_Now, now, Molly dear." He said crisply, looping an arm around her shoulders and herding her back toward St. Bart's. "I think you've had a little too much social obligation from the living today."_

_She had been too horrified at what she had bellowed in front of Queen and country to do more than walk where he pointed._

He thought it had been hilarious- Lestrade told her, which confirmed her hunch that they blathered like old biddies as they poked around crime scenes together. She couldn't decide if this was even more mortifying that Lestrade knew- or that Sherlock had felt it was worth repeating- SHERLOCK! He couldn't even repeat a 'good morning' without almost bursting into flames.

It was weird. He was weird.

He was also a real guy as opposed to a glitched robot- toilet humor was always appreciated apparently when hollered from at least a partially respectable lady's lips.

She never did get that card back- so much for group therapy. She suspected he had a slight distaste for organized outside 'help'.

Unsurprising he'd force that view on her- not that she really was bothered by it because she'd do whatever she pleased and would deal with him later- preferably before he had the chance to whine and nag.

He had been a lot more protective against possible discord within her diminutive microsphere of influence- again it sounded heartwarming and even she couldn't help the little gooey spots near her heart when he accidently let his concern show. She was proud to say she almost knew what to look for now and he conversely worked harder at hiding it- but most of the time it just translated into his heavy handed lectures that degraded into hissy fits if she continued 'her idiotic plight to cuddle everyone'. Which if she stopped to reflect on most of these instances she could read the patterns and almost peg where he was coming from.

Sherlock was too controlling to willingly allow outsiders to muck with his sphere of people- so tiny but incredibly important to him because Mycroft had been right, and Sherlock did not truly enjoy being alone- even though he put up a good showing to the contrary on the surface, but all but blew the foundation out with his insistent presence. He'd seek her out- like for instance, when she was at her mother's hiding from the world and his perceived abandonment- he would be cranky about that for a while yet. She provided him with wonderful distractions and opportunities to just be himself and with Little in essence, breaking her small world into jagged pieces of hurt, fear, and media mobs, he had lost something as well.

Because he was a selfish tosser too, she couldn't forget.

That demonstrated just how far the reigning world champion for insensitivity had come over the last few weeks since Little had been convicted and locked away- not for life, but Sherlock was confident he'd probably die from natural causes brought on by his unnatural state while in the clink.

She was still, at the time, in the dark on how he came to be so broken, having given up on asking simply because thinking of Little in sympathetic lights made her queasy- he still brutalized and tried to rape her after all- and she had to get over her genetic niceness where that beast was concerned. Sherlock had made a deal with her that he'd explain everything but not until she was able to handle it without issue, but Molly felt this to a borderline copout because she'd probably always curdle and have problems wherever Little touched her life- so until that time came- potentially never- she had to make do with the random and unexpected blessings that came out of the Little Fiasco.

For the record, she had NOT been pleased with his evasiveness in the information department, going so far as to withhold body and bit access- Bernard had been absurdly ecstatic about it- which had really embittered the pushy consulting detective to the point where war was imminent if talks broke down any further. Tara was biased and Lestrade had shamelessly sided with her and that impelled Sherlock to cry foul on DI Suck Up and just pushed the negotiations to the bottom of the pile.

Tough noogies, buddy. Molly was finished screwing around and Sherlock was forced to accept her terms in exchange for supplies. He countered with his offer and by this point- some six weeks later- she was too exhausted from keeping him at bay to hold out much longer- he wasn't so damn good at his chosen professional past time for nothing. He was persistent with a capitol P in flashing neon lights. She would have lasted maybe another two days of his shenanigans before having a fit herself.

Plus he removed the foot from his mouth long enough to accidently let slip that he 'didn't want to worry her' and she, the gullible sap she was, finally heard his idea out. Hence, the acceptance of the Deal. She had been skittish and it was him that had to make the effort because she was five seconds away from bolting back into the morgue and ignoring all further peace talks.

War had been diverted and millions of lives saved because Heaven forbid, Sherlock Holmes not have his bits. She supposed, she could have made things easier for him- just because he broke into her mum's house for a visit, and ended up staying till the sky started to brighten on the horizon, chit chatting with her about…well, everything, and being the questionable good friend he did not know how to be- but she had been so hurt, and he, if he chose to stay by her side, needed to understand without a doubt, question, or Sherlockian supposition of digression, that she wasn't a pawn for him to play with just because he had dubious moral codes where people's lives were concerned and the state in which they should be left.

Her life wasn't a game piece - even if he claimed that had not been his intention, she did not care. She was extremely lenient with him in almost every area of social interaction- but this, she was making her stand and he would have to be the one to concede.

She wasn't expecting a crisis like Little to every happen again- God she wished so bad she had been right about that- but Sherlock was a mad genius wrapped around a child, give an inch and he went light-years. He would do something akin to this again if she didn't kick up a fuss- at one point, she could remember she wouldn't even talk to him which had gone over rather poorly as she recalled the minute details, in that he seemed pleased with the developments in their working relationship, so she tortured him with _Jersey Shore_ and _Teen Mom _marathons with the small lab TV, ON TOP of body and bit withholding.

"_That's playing dirty, Hooper!" She heard him complain as he came flying out of the morgue, sans coat, but still able to comfortably retain the effect of bluster. _

_She blinked at him. "Now, whatever can you mean?"_

_His eyes were gleaming crazy, and she just narrowed hers, mentally gearing up. "You locked everything, and insist on sitting in here and watching that fatuous excuse for programming!"_

"_So?" She had thought maybe he'd just pick those locks- he had enough skill to do so and his restraint in that area was unusual._

_He was pacing at this point, hair messier than normal and Molly had to work to smother the urge to give into him. "I can't work like this!" He hissed like an angry cat._

_She sighed, as she turned her head back to the repulsive girl on the telly that had been foolish enough to mess around and get pregnant while still being a baby herself. "You'll live."_

"_Molly!" He barked and she turned to look back at him. _

"_Will you explain?" She said it simply and honestly. If he sensed mockery he'd probably degenerate further into insanity and start eating crayons or something._

_He looked incredibly pained. "It's not important, it won't change anything."_

_She felt the skin around her eyes tighten before she turned back around to her program, sacking the conversation as a lost cause. Their little domestic had been an undercurrent between them for the last few weeks- Little's trial and the consequent fallout concerning everything surrounding it had not allotted her a lot of mental space to waste with Sherlock's shadier aspects and motives. Lestrade had been like dealing with a bar of soap in comparison, easily slipped back into place with no resistance outside of work barriers that she had to respect for the sake of his job- yet he still couldn't speak on whatever it was the had involved their eccentric friend because of said barriers, it was weird and smelled super fishy but he did a marvelous job at pushing her curiosity off onto the git. Sherlock had no convenient excuse, and since he was banned from court proceedings for quite possibly committing a felony within the subject matter of the trial- she had several theories on that and all seemed both likely and highly unlikely at the same time- and that he wouldn't talk about it the few times she did speak with him. She hadn't really dealt with him during trial week outside of his surprise drop-in the first day. She knew he had been around- because he said so- and truth be told, she seized upon the excuse to not watch or pay close attention to the horror of the ongoing court drama- to stave off restless nights full of terrible things- in favor of covertly trying to find him amongst the court goers or the flocks of media clogging the outside doors. _

_It was like a 'Where's Waldo' in real life._

_He was worryingly good at hiding in plain sight. She never mentioned to either her mum or Lestrade that he was around, and she maybe wondered if the DI even knew he did this._

_Still, his talents were his, just as her business was hers. _

"_I don't want you to dwell on that which you cannot control!" He snarled at her back and she jumped at the volume- he was always a lot more uncouth when under some unperceivable self-regulated pressure. _

"_Sherlock, I'm only asking for the truth here. Not your soul." She sighed, turning to look up at him, and fighting the urge to shrink away from his crackling temper- so unfair that he could use his personality as a projectile weapon. "Whether I can control what it is or not, is irrelevant at this point." _

"_You'll worry like a useless fool over it." He sulked, and she actually had to hold herself still to keep from reacting like she wanted too. He had been a royal pain in the rear the last few weeks since she brought the hammer down on his lab access, and at this moment, she had two options, accept his poorly attempted concern because he was emotionally inhibited, or strangle him._

_There was something else too, something she had been more attuned too since seeing that black sedan lounging at the end of her mum's driveway all those weeks ago._

_She wasn't about to fall into a Holmes trap- those were tricky to spot, and she had a feeling there was one somewhere in this conversation just waiting for her to step in. She best get out. Snatching the remote to the small TV so she could control it like a brat from within the windowed morgue, Molly made to flee from the danger zone- because there was no way she was relinquishing control to him. "Things to do." She muttered by way of explanation as she skittered past him, and he about had a tantrum as he groaned in frustration at the notion of having to wait longer to work on whatever experiments he had backlogged._

"_No, no, no!" He hounded after her at once. "You aren't dodging this any longer."_

_She glared- and he was unmoved because her mean face was pitiful. "Pot calling the kettle black."_

_He shook his head. "Not even distantly."_

_She was unimpressed. _

"_How about a compromise?" He rushed as he carded a hand through his dark hair, a certain air of desperation about him. "A deal."_

_Poor bastard…_

_It had been the first time he ever suggested one, which, coupled with how tired she was at keeping up this punishment- she was going to be a questionable mother someday and Lord forbid they be anything like the man before her- and his 'barely held together' look, Molly eased up enough to listen to what he had to say._

Their truce brought tranquility back to St. Bart's lab and morgue and the stressed calm eventually evened out into normal, or as normal as things ever got with him prowling around and being his irrepressible self.

Git.

There had been another unexpected boon to come from the madness the trial blew into her life by way of one Joe Doognert, aka Doughnuts.

She had been talking fairly regularly with him since the day after the night at _Union Underground_- because he had been unsettled by Sherlock's personal brand of caring, and wanted to see how she was doing, so he got her number from Tara via Wade. Sometimes- RARELY because she was no fool- she wished someone had caught the whole scene outside the club on tape so she could have seen what they all saw. Sherlock made poor first impressions all the time, but they seemed to communally think he was a lot more volatile than he actually was. Most of the time, he was all whirling energy and intense about whatever it was he was working on, while handing out his opinions left and right on stuff, or just plain ignoring everything he found too dull.

But that night must have been really different- like pre-Bexley Park, buzzed Sherlock, which she could remember easily and still felt pain over because he had been so broken once upon a time.

He was better now, and rather facing this sort of thing again made her uneasy- kind of like an itch she could not scratch within her brain.

Even Tara seemed off put by him and she KNEW what he was like- saw him enough throughout the week.

Molly just assured Joe- everyone- that she was fine and that Sherlock was in no way a psychopathic abuser or whatever such nonsense they immediately supposed he was- however, she could possibly, maybe, probably see where they came to such a conclusion. But Sherlock was just…Sherlock to her- the guy had his quirks, but he would rather rattle the hornets' nest vigorously before chucking it into a milling crowd just to see what happens and be long gone by the time the injured mob rallied in retaliation.

Sherlock was…just Sherlock.

"_I'm seriously alright." She rasped into the phone resting on the couch's arm rest a good foot from her head- the tinny sound was extremely grating and she could not handle it closer to her ear, so loud speaker was what she had to make do with. Sherlock was fine with that, stretched lazily out further down on the other wing of her wrap around sofa, because he was nosey and there was nothing else for him to focus on really that morning other than making sure she didn't choke on her own vomit in the shower. He could have gone home, but seemed peculiarly content to just lounge around like a big cat and pick on her._

"_He didn't…" Came the hesitant question and she lifted her head- that felt like a medicine ball- which she had resting on a pillow to look at the small mobile. She knew who they must have been asking about, and she hadn't bothered to inform anyone that he was still kipped out in her apartment- best avoid any questions in that area with him in earshot. "He didn't like, make things worse did he?" Well now…there was a loaded question._

_She groggily looked over at the 'he' in question. "He?" She asked, playing stupid._

"_You know…Sherlock?" Doughnuts sounded unsure and she blinked as the subject of their conversation lifted an unimpressed eyebrow at her phone before completely disregarding it as unimportant, turning his attention back to the muted telly. They were watching _Charlie Chan_, something she didn't know he actually liked considering he was solidly a child of the future and the old black and white mystery program was decidedly anything but. She figured he must like anything where a person was unequivocally smarter than the collective congregation as a unit and spent a good portion putting the morons down._

_Molly on the other hand didn't know whether to feel touched for the concern, or protective of Sherlock, who had been steadfast in both his verbal dressing down and attention- Sherlock was winning by a landslide because she _always _took issue with people who took issue with him- even if he deserved it. "Sherlock took great care of me, Joe." She said quietly, and resolutely. "He always does." He didn't need to know that this was a first for such an incident._

_Aw, crap, now he would probably assume her to be a drunken mess regularly. Oh, well, best put any potential cries of 'wolf' to rest before they could sprout up and trigger false alarms._

"_You're sure?" He still seemed hesitant, and Molly smiled at her phone for his concern- while her house guest scoffed something low and very rude._

"_Positive." She cleared her throat, "He's a good friend of mine. He'd never let me hurt myself in a situation like that."_

_There was a sigh over the line and conversation eased up and moved onto lighter things before they said their pleasantries and hung up. Molly buried her head at once, the headache making the brightness of her apartment a little too much to tolerate with good poise at the moment._

"_He's a right milksop." Sherlock said before unmuting his show and Molly started vibrating in silent laughter at the goofy medieval insult, feeling slightly bad at the same time because Joe was apparently really nice- considering she just re-met him over the phone as last night was a jumbled haze of lights and bright drinks. It was just funny hearing 'milksop' come from a voice like the one Sherlock was thankfully gifted with. So serious._

_Oh, she had a headache, and if she kept laughing the barf boggart might be back to ruin her hour. "Be nice." She managed between the pain of merriment and her hangover. _

_His lips tilted up, but he just laced his fingers over his belly and pressed back into the squishy couch cushions harder. "I wasn't the one laughing."_

_She knew she could be a horrible person. He only made it worse. "Don't say things that are funny and mean so then I won't laugh." Well, that was completely backwards logic… "Nevermind…"_

_He rumbled in amusement and she felt a little better._

Sometimes, she truly wondered what other people saw when they looked at the mouthy consulting detective and why they all assumed he was like…Buffalo Bill from _Silence of the Lambs_ or a big chauvinistic pig that liked to secretly slap her around. He belittled everyone, not just her- yes, he seemed to treat her differently- not necessarily better or worse- than Anderson, Tara, and even Lestrade, but he was still a wankermeister. He could be aggressive, but she'd never seen him hit anyone, or ever heard of him striking anyone. His knuckles didn't bare marks from someone who might be joining Wade in the illegal bare-knuckled boxing matches that she fantasized him doing.

He was a drug user- but he was clean! He was clean, damnit! No one could hold that against him and say so within her earshot! She already decked Anderson once for that, she'd do it again.

He was just a super smart prat with a pension toward the incensed histrionics.

He would never lift a hand to her- this was something she was dead sure about with him, he would never physically do anything to harm her because he about lost his marbles when he thought- for possible a millisecond- that he'd knocked her down the stairs. One time they were walking down to the canteen because she wanted suspicious coffee and him to eat something other than cigarettes, and as they rounded the last flight, she bumped into his side, lost her footing and took a tumble down maybe ten steps on her rear and he about had a conniption and melt down in the stairwell as he helped her up, both bitching her and himself out in the weirdest form of 'are you alright' she had ever experienced. Distance, familiarity, and a bruise free rear end had made that memory really sweet because it showed he had a shred of decency his parents had instilled so deep, even he wouldn't pry it out.

Her recollection at that point told her that she had punched more people - sooo wrong- than he had. He would never experiment on her when she was asleep without her knowledge. Awake was a whole different ball game, but he was better about giving a heads up…sometimes.

He wasn't a psycho like everyone just assumed because they couldn't be bothered to look past the offensive front he cast ahead of him because he could. And she was getting super sick of people always telling her to stay away from him, to not let her guard down around him because he was a ticking time bomb- no he wasn't. He was eccentric, not unstable. She was to the point that she might actually be the sleeping psycho in their midst because if Anderson called him a_ Freak_ one more time, she was going to lock his big mouth in the active store with open cases until he lost his mind, and then sock him in the throat for good measure when she finally let him out.

It was eerie how protective of him she had become over the years- she'd always been defensive of him, but it just got worse with age. The more she learned about the quirky guy, the more she bristled and flared up at those who couldn't see how amazing he really was- outside of his standard amazing. He just needed a chance and he grew on a person like a polyp- which could be either good or bad.

She figured he was predominantly good- at least for her and Lestrade. Lestrade was fond of him and that had to count for something outside the protective lab walls because he was too busy trying to keep all of London safe from Sherlock and vice versa to stop and appreciate the subtle Sherlockisms- like his odd tendency to show up under the guise of business- he was checking his investments Molly surmised, to see what she or Lestrade were doing if he hadn't been by in a while- even if he was on a case- and those distracted him almost completely- he'd still ram through her double gray doors, scaring her, and do a sweep, mutter something inherently important about the case and leave, not saying one word to her.

That took around two years to figure out and she was super proud of her own deducing.

However, it also took nearly two and three quarter years for her to observe something a little more…troubling.

There was a frightening possibility that Sherlock…may just be her best friend. She could remember the uncertainty and strange fear that came with the dawning realization because at some point, from the first time she had welcomed him back so enthusiastically from his first stint in rehab, to him spiriting himself illegally into her bedroom at her mum's, Sherlock had become an indispensable fixture in her life. As in she would probably break if he ever left- the bad kind of break, where a person loses something fundamental in themselves. He knew everything about her- which was really annoying sometimes- and she could just be herself completely around him because he could care less about things like image. Impressing him was a no go from day one, but that was alright, she didn't like wearing foundation anyway. She got along with him astonishingly well considering all things involving him and how he acted like sour milk through half of them- unpleasant. She wasn't really cowed by him and his tantrums anymore- however she could still be startled by them- and if they flared up, she was mostly able to navigate them like a seasoned pro.

In fact, her relationship with him was one of the easiest- outside of his gitwad tendencies- because she was able to just be Molly. It sounded stupid, but that was the essence of it. Sherlock noticed everything and if he could see her and prefer it to 'dress to impress' Molly- for meetings she would put in a lot of effort to not look like the little goblin in the morgue and he always got huffy when he saw her coming, but he didn't say anything too atrocious outside of make-up quips that had her frantically rechecking her face every five seconds….he sucked on those days- he was alright in her book.

So he was probably, in all actuality, her real best friend and she was going to never utter a word of it to him unless something drastic happened because he was jerk enough to probably just stand there, uninspired, and ask bluntly what he was to do with new, useless information other than delete it.

Well, Sherlock, not hurling it back in her face would have been a good start.

It had been the only thing that worried her at the time in regards to her personal interactions with Sherlock Bloody Holmes, because she wasn't sure he knew that there was a category to friendship with that label of 'best friend' heading it- she didn't even know if he wanted a best friend and if he did, why in the world would he chose her? She thought he was slowly getting friendship- not that he called her a 'friend', in fact, he had never once called her a friend. She was just Molly, or 'you' and he'd point because he burned all his manners the second his mother stopped controlling him every second of everyday, the little snot.

And…recently, she found that the acknowledged title of 'friend' really wasn't all that important _between them_at least- he was too damn nosey and possessive about some things for her to even mistakenly believe he didn't like her in his own convoluted way. The problem was with how he handled her emotions- poorly. She had to practically wrap her heart in Kevlar before she dared approach him with a serious problem that she wanted help with- because he normally ignored her prattling unless she requested answer and then he'd be all blunt and Sherlock it up, typically. Sometimes he was nice…sometimes.

Seldom.

Like no mosquito bites in summer event.

If she worried about something concerning her job he'd be frank with a side of butthead. If she was upset over people- depended on whom- and he'd be frank with a portion of arse. If she had been discussing a guy specifically- he was just an arse. Granted what guy wanted to listen to a girl whine about boys and the correct answer outside of maybe a gay man was no man. So she could get the jerk act to a point…and then he was just being mean for the sake of tradition.

So she didn't tell him about Joe, because he'd be unkind and condescending without a doubt because he _did not_ like Doughnuts' nickname, he _did not _like his real name, he _did not _like anything about him- them. He didn't like any of Wade's friends, un-shockingly from that night- he barely tolerated Tara because he still leveled a healthy dose to irrational prejudice on the receptionists shoulders because SHE, MOLLY, had been a drunken, careless, idiot that he had ended up volunteering for babysitting- how was that for logical from the Logic is Law Poster boy? However is showed he liked her so she put up with his pratty comments even if he was rather like handling an armed bomb in that if he was jostled he could erupt, taking innocent victims with him like a true champion.

So imagine his displeasure when he found out? Had she realized how bothered he was, she would have said something because she didn't fancy intentionally deceiving him.

She would have also been flattered he'd been so jealous if had been for the standard, normal, rational reasons.

Sherlock never made anything easy.

_She was rushing to finish recording her notes into an appropriate log- instead of the iodine stained napkin thing she used originally because her notebook was on a MISSING PERSONS LIST somewhere. It was almost two o'clock and she was breaking for freedom early today as she had a date. A DATE. An actual, honest to God, D-A-T-E, date! With a man she knew in real life as opposed to an _E-Harmony_ link up, and it just made everything that much better because she had a chance of knowing where she stood pre-date!_

_A date! Yay!_

"_Why didn't you tell me!" Tara suddenly came thundering into the lab, banging the double gray doors noisily off the subway tiled walls as she charged toward her station. "Wade knew and I didn't? That's a serious breach of the girl code." She was waving her mobile about as if casting spells. "Wade?! He barely remembers if he's put on clean underwear for the day and yet recalls getting a message from JOE! Saying you two were going OUT on a DATE TONIGHT! Because he's down from Manchester!"_

_Molly rapidly clicked her pen in thought, desperately trying to neatly sum up her experiment's results while they were still fresh. "He just asked me last night." Her face rolled with spasms as she fought a stupid grin. She was losing._

"_Yes, well, that's exactly when I should have been informed too!" Tara raged as she paced. "How can I properly cheer for you if I'm unaware a performance is only hours away from opening night?!"_

_She felt her face split into an excited smile over Tara's decided approval and enthusiasm for her DATE! With JOE! She had a date with Doughnuts! YAY! "I was…distracted. Do you know how long it's been since I've had a proper date? A year!"_

_Tara just flapped her hand at her. "You've had a lot on your plate; doesn't count." She clicked her way back and forth in front of her on a cute pair of glitzy pumps. "So where are you two going? Movies? Dinner? A romantic ride on the London Eye so you can make out undaunted for fifteen of those thirty minutes with a fantastic view?"_

_Molly giggled, filing away that suggestion for later use. "Joe suggested we go learn to dance! HE suggested taking a dance class and I cannot tell you how fun that sounds!" It was true; she had not been dancing with a man…outside of a club…since never. Not real dancing- waltz, salsa, square dance- and she was so looking forward to it. Scribbling in a few half-arsed thought points that would help jog her memory- because she would have to finish this thing tomorrow- she tossed her pen away from her and quickly dismounted her stool. "I'm so excited I can't even concentrate!" _

_Tara sighed, eyes yearning. "Ugh, dancing? I have been trying to drag Wade to that for ages and he won't go because it interferes with baseball." She whined, finding Molly's good fortune completely unfair._

"_If it's fun and Joe wants to try it again, maybe we can get Wade to go on a double?" Molly suggested hesitantly, worried about sounding too hopeful for a good showing with a chance of a repeat- oh PLEASE be a good date, she was so tired of disappointment._

"_Oh, GOD yes!" Tara clapped her hands as she hopped excitedly. "Joe and Wade are like brofriends for life so it would definitely increase my chances of being paraded across a dance floor."_

_Molly couldn't help the squeal of excitement as she skipped over to her desk to messily begin sorting all her papers into meaningless stacks that she would have to decode tomorrow- but who cared? She had a date! _

"_So what are you planning to wear?" Tara followed her over and helped straighten her messy desk by picking pens and Kitkat wrappers out of the paper piles. "Dancing to learn is different than club dancing. Plus it's hot outside so you should steer clear of heavy clothes."_

_Molly bobbed her head. "I have flirty skirts but I'm less inclined to wear them because of the poor state of my rear legs." It was something she had been forced to accept- scars weren't sexy and they were still too pink to blend in and not draw attention. "I was thinking large shrug top or something over dark leggings and flats. I learned my lesson about heels and dancing cold turkey."_

_Tara tapped her lips. "Understandable." She said before zeroing in on what Molly had locked within her closet. _

_This was fun. Talking date outfits with another girl- instead of Bernard who seemed to think full coverage was the only way she should ever go. He was too much a grandpa at heart to really want to see her cavorting around in things that exposed too much arm or flesh above the ankles. _

"_Hair?" Tara questioned._

"_Still unsure." Molly snatched a stack of cadaver files slowly sliding down another mountain of paper._

_The younger girl hummed loudly as she watched Molly shove another stack into another random stack. "What time are you meeting him?"_

_Molly glanced at the small clock mounted up on the wall. "At five actually. It's why I'm bailing early- I work all the time and since today's been…well not slow exactly, but distracting, I figured I'll quit fighting it." Plus she wanted to dodge a possible Sherlock encounter- he'd been scarce this week on some case Lestrade had been stressed about, and if he was going to put in an appearance, the fifth day usually seemed to be it and he'd get all bothered and grumpy if she were leaving- he didn't like being there alone, he just wanted to be left alone while he worked._

_Complicated, pretending-not-to-be-sentimental git._

"_Well, Anita owes me a few favors so let me give her a ring up in General Reception to see if she can spare one of the girls and we can raid your wardrobe for a show stopper." Tara suggested quickly and Molly had only been too eager to agree. Second opinions were appreciated and Lestrade was too male to really understand the refinements women put into appearances- gold and antique gold should not be worn together and chunky necklaces coupled with dangly chunky earrings were a hard NO outside the circus. _

_He had been the only option for a while since Sherlock didn't even realize that questions like 'does this make me look frumpy, fat, or washed out' were not to be answered with anything other than a prompt 'no' if that person was not strictly female. Or a Lestrade, because he tried to give honest feedback that wasn't confidence denting._

_And she only knew this because of the few meetings she had to scrub up for around St. Bart's and those two guys lurked around in her lab like mold. _

_Within twenty minutes, they were hiking it down to Long Lane to catch the train, gossiping about clothes, Wade and Joe. Molly was interested on any insight Tara had to offer on Doughnuts- even those she and he had been constantly talking since he called her the morning after the club._

_Traffic was light at this time in the day and it took her less time to make the journey than it normally did later in the afternoon. So they were officially ahead of schedule by the time Molly was unlocking her flat, listening intently to Tara chatter about the appropriate footwear for every occasion. _

_Soon, her stereo was pumping modern hits into the room as a bottle of Miscato was popped open on her chest of drawers alongside her closet while Tara noisily shuttered hangers and snapped fabric. "Let's see, let's see- why do you have so many questionable tops, Molly? Your taste is better than _this_!" The shorter girl yanked a rather unfortunate light jumper down and held it up on herself and looking at Molly as if she were deranged._

"_I refuse to bio-hazard my good clothes into the furnace if I get stuff on them. Ugly clothes have their uses and I never feel guilty when I have to pitch them." Molly tipped her wine glass as she shrugged. She knew they were terrible looking, and Sherlock had certainly commented on them enough- if they were truly hideous that day because he normally never noticed- but she couldn't really be bothered to care. A destroyed two pound shirt was easier to swallow than forty pound top- she lost a favored article once that way and had barely recovered from the shock._

"_I will accept this answer on grounds of practicality alone. Fashion is fickle and these should never have seen the light of day." Tara dusted her hands off as she shoved the hanger back in with its ugly little friends and moved on- "Oh but I knew you were sensible! This top is perfect!"_

_Molly wasn't a true brunette- her hair had too much red in the coloring and most people grouped her in the auburn classification- which she didn't mind. Red hair was gorgeous in ringlets and waves. She used to envy people that had it. And like a true woman, she selected her clothes- the real ones, not her work duds- based on how they looked with her hair. So she had lots of pretty purples, greens, and blues within her wardrobe. She liked color, and she liked her grays and blacks- easy things she could pair without hesitation to anything else. _

_So she found herself wrapped in a pretty purple top over dark leggings with a pair of cabled arm warmers that Tara made her put on her legs before they made it to the shoes._

_Tara firmly believed the power of heels, and Molly liked them well enough and had very little opportunity to wear them. _

"_I'm going dancing though." Molly said as she moved to sit on her bed- which she had made that morning because no way in hell was Sherlock being less of a slob then she was. "I don't want to be hobbling like I did at the club."_

"_Beauty is pain." The shorter girl stated forcefully with the air of a dictator. "Plus they were a good choice and well worth watching Sherlock have kittens over." She snickered as she dropped a black pair of two inch heels down and gestured for Molly to lace up._

"_He said nothing about my shoes except 'heels on' and 'stupid choice'." Molly mentioned before taking a swig of her Miscato. She rather felt he hated her darling hooker heels and had been vocal when she returned from lunch one afternoon carrying a shopping bag with a brand new pair, vomit free, nestled snuggly within._

"_Who listens to anything he has to say? No, I was watching him…er…kinda. I was a little sloshed myself, but still able to retain the important details. He hovered like a shadow. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he had a certain special thing for you, Molls." Tara said as she rummaged around in Molly's jewelry for companion pieces. _

_Molly narrowed her eyes, little warning alarms going off somewhere deep in her cerebral cortex. Sherlock was his own brand of unique, and she had faced this 'I think he likes you' stuff before- Nicolas Hatcher, Anderson, Bernard, the list was lengthy and they were all wrong. It's not that she hadn't considered it before, but Sherlock did not fit into normal blocks of typical behavior and she couldn't use what she knew about other people as a basis of comparison and falling into a pit like that would just ruin everything because for once, she valued this weirdo relationship enough that risking it was never going to be worth possibly losing him. He showed his worry by being exceptionally aggressive and cold. He showed interest by circling like a shark until there were no longer secrets to be hidden. He liked puzzles and mysteries and she was neither. She was, however, familiar, friendly, and rather like a stain he didn't know how to treat so he just left it. Their friendship was hard won, because he was ridiculous and abrasive, but he was also persistent, and she accommodating and steadfast in her conviction that he had the potential to be something great. He had his good points- many of them- but he liked to kick stuff on top of them to camouflage them. He took care of her when life was swinging too hard; he allowed her to seek refuge next to him. And for this, she would always be grateful. However, this changed nothing and the basic formula for keeping things safe._

_Liking Sherlock Holmes was a very bad idea._

_It was very very bad that liking him would take little to no work and she refused, flat out, to let that happen. _

_Thinking these things, hours before a date with another man, was a very very very bad idea as well as highly inappropriate. Joe was taking her out and Sherlock was just her friend that happened to be larger than life. End of story._

"_He also likes criminals, bits, and hating on sweets." Molly deadpanned, selecting a pair of blushed pearl earrings and a matching ring. "Do you think Joe likes Italian? We never discussed dinner, but he's a guy and food is always a good start to anything." Tara transitioned easily with her subject change without question, points to her because what would Molly have said?_

_So by the time Molly was dolled up and had her hair carefully mussed and tied into a high pony tail- because they were going dancing and anything else would drive her bonkers, but it was still a first date so a line had to be drawn which meant some strands were curled and some left as they were- she had to go or risk being late with the volume on the tube. _

_Tara and her split up a few stops up from Long Lane were Tara needed to disembark, but only after strict instructions spiked with heavy threats that Molly had to call and report ALL details at the conclusion of the evening._

_It was around this point that Molly realized she had forgotten her phone back at home and groaned. She knew they were meeting at Embankment Station, but having a phone to help zero in would have been a lot more comforting._

_Oh, well…_

_It's not like she would need it beyond meeting Joe and calling Tara later._

_By the time she was stepping nervously from the train, already craning around to look for her counterpart amongst the hundreds of moving bodies, she was a bundle of self-doubt and energy. What if he didn't like her? What if things were too awkward? What if she looked ridiculous with those arm warmers turned leg warmers slouching over her sturdy heels? _

_What if he never showed and she was stood up?_

_Oh, that would suck something terrible. If that happened she was walking to the nearest pub and drinking herself into the future where memories did not exist. She'd just tell the barkeep to give NSY a call and Lestrade could come drag her phoneless, stood up, drunken sad sack home._

_She was barely ten feet from the train, already feeling the roiling panic of not seeing him grip her from within when she turned and saw him the exact second he called her name._

_And my, was all this worth it._

_Joe was much like Wade, if a little shorter- still taller than her in heels, yay!- good looking, solid, dark hair and dark eyes. He was wearing the hell out that blue button down and dark trousers and Molly felt infinitely better about her persnickety ensemble when his eyes widened in appreciation while his mouth seemed unable to fully close._

_Thank you, Tara!_

"_You look beautiful." He started a little too quickly and cut the back half of the sentence off and appeared highly embarrassed by it, which was just adorable._

_Laughing, she slipped in for a hug- because if a date didn't start with a hug or end with a hug it was a bad omen according to Wade's _Cosmo_ advice- "You don't scrub up so bad yourself, Joe." She squeezed him extra for emphasis._

_He seemed to ease up, more sure footed at this point and he gestured magnanimously for her to take his arm and led them easily through the masses toward the exit. Chatting with her about work and what she had been up to._

_This was a good start she felt._

And it had been. The Shell Mex House offered all sorts of dance classes and for a basic learn-them-in-an-hour-or-two class, it was perfect. She had so much fun letting him twist and turn them into corners or other couples by accident that she started to fear they were maybe going to kick her out if she didn't get ahold of herself. Joe was easy going and unafraid to try even playing the traditional female role, allowing her to take the reins and try waltzing them around the dance floor.

By the end of class, she had been out of breath and flushed from just having a bloody good time. Joe wasn't much better and they had stumbled onto Carting Lane giggling like mad.

She had a wonderful time, and it just seemed to keep getting better. He took her to one of his favorite hole in the wall Italian restaurants- only after she encouraged him to show her this place because it sounded wonderful- and they had gabbed the evening away over glasses of delicious wine and plates of juicy lasagna.

Unfortunately, the date ended on a sour note and Molly was seriously starting to question the vendetta the universe seemed to have on her and a good time.

Because there was no way, no possible, freaking way to salvage a date or keep the nightmares at bay when there is a dead child and a frazzled DI Lestrade tossed into the mix.

Not to mention a pissed Sherlock.

_They were wandering slowly back to the nearest tube station- she honestly did not have a shiny clue which one that might have been, so engrossed with the man telling his story beside her- evening winding down reluctantly because it was still a work night and he had a meeting in the morning before heading off back to Manchester. This would have been a huge bummer except his work was looking to transfer him down into the London Branch within the next few months._

"_I'm from here originally, but after school, my parents took off for the Continent and Wade was in medical school, so I figured, why not go to Manchester." He told her, hands buried deep in his pockets as they ambled down the streetlight drenched avenue toward the station._

"_Do you like Manchester?" She asked, keeping pace beside him, but watching the ground so as to not step on a crack over the rough brick, catch her heel, and face plant like a boob._

"_It's alright. No ties really. I prefer London because all the guys are here- Wade, Ben, Raph, and Will- their like my brothers in a way. Especially Wade."_

_She pursed her lips at Ben's name; he was tool with a capital T, but then everyone had that ONE friend that was generally disliked- hers was Sherlock. "Was he the one to christen you Doughnuts?"_

_Joe actually snorted a laugh, which was a relief because she couldn't tell if he despised that name and his friends just called him it on purpose like all best friends were wont to do. "I was a dough ball back in school. Doughnuts were a particular favorite of mine- still are, in fact. The coach of the football team had yelled that at me once because he knew it too, and hoped that the name would encourage me to strive harder. It didn't really, but the name stuck."_

_They rounded the last block and before Molly could ask about Will and Raph- who she was intensely curious about because even in as accepting of gays as most people were nowadays, having two best friends in a manly, beef eating clique, like the one Wade and Joe belonged- where rough sports and imagined bare knuckled sparring were the past times- seemed preciously rare. It spoke volumes to her. But she never had the chance because there was a flurry of activity that included cherry red lights blinking off the buildings, NSY panda's blocking half the road, and constables guarding the sidewalk they were currently traversing._

"_What's going on you wonder?" Joe asked her as they stopped half a dozen meters back, and she shook her head. _

"_Hopefully nothing that I'll have to deal with at work." She droned, using her hand to tug him by the arm. "Let's take a different route, shall we? Leave the ambulances chasers to the cops?"_

_Joe squinted as if trying to see what was going on, and Molly bit her lip to keep from snickering at him for being one of those ambulance rubberneckers. She supposed never encountering this stuff would seem exciting from the outside looking in. So she allowed him to tug her down the street closer, both crossing rapidly to the other side since the cops had their original side barricaded with tape and mean looking Yarders. _

_Whatever was going on was deeper within the alleyway they were congregated around, and Molly herself sighed as she saw both the ambulance- sitting quietly with flashing lights- and the Serious Crimes Forensics truck parked right alongside it. "Well that's never a good combination."_

"_What?" He asked, turning to look down at her. _

_She pointed to the vehicles and said softly so as to not freak the people out around them. "If there's an ambulance and SCF truck at a scene, it means they found someone in a very bad way." It also meant that she was going to be handling the fallout from whatever was causing this much of fuss because this part of London fell under one of the Districts that sent their cases to her._

_Joy…_

_She was watching the faces of the Yarders and MET works, trying to see if she recognized any of them, and as she was staring at a group near the SCF van, it took her longer than necessary to realize she was being stared back at by one Detective Sally Donovan._

_As if just realizing who she was looking at as well, Sally broke away from the thronged officers, calling her name. "Oi, Hooper!"_

"_You know her?" Joe asked, and Molly wished she could say no. She did not care for Sally- she called Sherlock a _Freak _too, and was purposefully antagonistic toward the highfalutin git. The only difference being that unlike her male counterpart Anderson, Sally wasn't a complete moron and actually aimed to kill with intention._

_Donovan stopped at the tape, waiting for Molly to apparently come forward like a damn summoned dog, and she exhaled slowly to keep her temper. Well…dang it._

"_Evening, Donovan." She shuffled forward, Joe in tow so Sally would get the hint and not be herself. _

"_Good, it is you." She said crisply before pulling out a walkie talkie. "Lestrade, Hooper's outside."_

_Wait, what? "What's going on?" Molly quickly asked. "Donovan?"_

_Sally cocked an eyebrow at her as if she was stupid, and that just made Molly dislike her that little bit more. "A crime scene." Well…no shit, Sherlock._

"_Obviously, but what's this have to do with me?" She said waspishly. She was not in the mood for Sally's lording behavior tonight- ever. _

_Before she could answer, Lestrade was striding through his people toward them- Molly couldn't miss him, as the Yarders and MET workers cleared a path as if he were king or something. "Molly, where have you been?"_

_What did he mean 'where has she been'? What was going on? "I was on a date." She gestured to Joe, who seemed out of his depth but holding strong. "With Joe, here. What do you want?"_

_Lestrade briefly acknowledged Joe with a curt nod, all business tonight apparently. "We've been calling you- Sherlock's been right acerbic about it and it's becoming too much with Anderson nearby."_

_Wait what the heck was- what was going on? He wasn't making a lick of sense. "I forgot my phone at home, Lestrade. And what's Sherlock on about? He's dealt a lot more with this than I have, and Anderson and him usually don't get along, so what's different now?" _

"_Anderson won't work with him." Lestrade stated eyes intent. "I need an expert who won't faint or be scared off easily."_

_Well that's a right shame. "I'm a Forensic Pathologist, Lestrade, not a Coroner. This is more Crime Scene Investigator- go get Sherlock." She suggested, desperate. "He's got a good eye for the medical side of things."_

"_He's already here." The DI said, and Molly felt a certain measure of dread- if Sherlock really was here, there was probably something nasty down that alleyway that Lestrade was subtly trying to get her to go look at._

"_Good enough." She rejoined, already stepping back. She did not want to do this- she was on her first date in a year and this potentially tragic laden garbage could not be happening. She reached out and gripped Joe, who had yet to move from her side. _

"_Well right now, you're as close to an official medical expert as I have, can I spare you?" He asked easily dancing around her one road block with the 'official' word, and already had the tape raised for her to duck under._

_He was antsy and she could feel herself caving in. "Fine! I'll take a look." She made to step forward, Joe being drug behind her to slip under the tape when Sally spoke up. _

"_He can't come back here." She said, and Molly planted her feet._

"_Oh well, then. I guess I retract my offer as I am still on a date and not an official member of Serious Crimes." She snipped and Lestrade groaned, shaking his head at his lackey. "Enough Sally. Joe? Was it? Come wait over here, please. This way, Molly." He did this all with a calm efficiency and Molly groaned loudly before turning to Joe, who looked politely interested._

"_I'll be back as soon as I can." She rushed. "I'm so sorry about this." He just smiled at her and waved her on. _

"_Go show 'em how it's done." _

_She gave him one last apologetic look and turned and followed Lestrade through the maze of cars and Yarders. "I still don't see why you need me."_

_Lestrade rolled his shoulders. "This case is high priority, Molly. We needed you to come in so when we delivered the body you'd be ready."_

_Great. "So there is a body?"_

_He nodded, and she watched in fascination as the muscles near his jaw bulged from the force of him clenching it so tightly. "It's a child, Molly." He said quietly and she thought she almost didn't hear him. She wished she hadn't. Child cases were always the worst and she didn't get them often, but they did happen. She sighed, not saying anything more because the horror of seeing this was going to take some considerable control and discussing it further would maybe weaken her._

_This was a nicer section of London, if older, and it showed on the main avenues and streets the care and money pumped into it. But alleyways would always be dingy and dirty, no matter if the Queen herself just lived down the road a mile or two, and Molly cringed thinking of the muck she was stepping through. "Just a second, Greg." She begged as she stopped and propped a heel up on the closest bumper to pull her arm warmers up higher so not get them splashed by oil slicked water puddles floating with grossness. _

_Lestrade waited politely, watching her the entire time as she switched legs to do the same thing on the other with a strange look on his face._

"_What?" She asked, stepping back and checking to make sure all things were out of the danger zone that could be._

"_You look really nice tonight, Molly. I'm actually really sorry to be wrecking your date." And she beamed at him for his notice- because Lestrade was extremely handsome himself and actually rather decent for a bloke that good looking. He knew this had to have been her first opportunity to be back on the field after such a terrible year full of hospitals and emotional rollercoasters off dead end cliffs. _

"_It's happens I suppose, but thank you for saying so." She shrugged at him, thinking it was Lestrade and if he asked her to do anything, she'd probably do it despite inconvenience because she adored him and he wasn't a supreme git to take advantage like that. Even if this was happening to her, and bloody figures on a first date with Joe- she'd be lucky to get a second at this rate… "Shall we?"_

_He nodded, still watching her with that unreadable look to him, and as they dove deeper into the alley, the activity seemed to just go up around her- people in Hazmat suits scrounging around bins and broken bits of furniture that had yet to ever be collected for proper disposal. The bend was coming up ahead as the one building came to end, forcing a left hand turn, and as they rounded it- Lestrade extending an arm generously so she could tip toe delicately around a puddle large enough to possibly have no bottom- she caught her first sight of ground zero- and one dark hair individual crouching over something._

_Molly swallowed, before sucking in a steadying breath- a dead child was less than a dozen paces ahead and even the toughest of people struggled over scenes like this. Letting Lestrade go, she turned to one of the Forensic guys and plucked a pair of latex gloves from amongst his supplies before turning and slinking toward heartbreak._

_Sherlock didn't look up as he examined something around the child's- a small girl, no older than ten…this was awful- neck and she eased down onto her heels, keeping her knees firmly together. "What do you think?" She asked softly, hands bunched together at her chest to keep from interfering with whatever it was he was seeing._

"_I think you're out of your depth." He adjusted the grip on his small magnifying glass, as he drew a few strands of filthy hair through his gloved fingers. _

_Well this was going to be even more unpleasant. "I'm usually inclined to agree with you, but I'm asking about this little girl." Her voice was unsteady as she let what she was really seeing start to sink in._

_Somehow, in this city so packed with people, this baby girl had slipped through the cracks and ended up in dirty back street, void of life and being prodded by what was most likely the least sympathetic man to ever look twice at her. She was skinny- too skinny, malnourished- but her face was frozen with the still rounded dredges of baby fat, lending a forever permanent cherubic look to her. Molly could see the broken skin and the sores- signs of either disease or abuse and she could not tell which. "Homeless?" _

"_Undoubtedly." He grunted and Molly had to keep from biting a hole into her lip. She'd never done this before, she'd never seen this part of Sherlock's or Lestrade's life- the discovery and consequent whirling of fresh deducing- and was unsure what to really do. _

_Why was she here? She didn't have enough crime scene experience to know her role and working with Sherlock was already proving to be turbulent. _

_She turned to look for Lestrade, hoping maybe he would have some sort of guideline for her to follow, but he was conversing seriously with Sally, who had followed them down here. Sherlock shifted again, lifting a thin, delicate arm and inspecting the elbow with a critical eye. _

_She was debating stepping back, telling Lestrade that she would see them at the lab- where she had her own criteria for formulating answers- where she would be of greater use, but Sherlock had other plans. "What does this look like to you?" He pointed, twisting the arm's flesh until she could see the broken, red raw skin surrounding a…hole._

"_O-Oh." She winced. "Bed sore, a nasty one."_

"_Good to see you're prepared for class." He retorted, and she jerked at the sharpness of it. "I asked what it looks like- not what is it."_

"_It looks like a bed sore, Sherlock. A hole surrounded by decaying flesh that she suffered with while she had been alive." She moved to stand up, legs cramping from how tightly she was holding herself and he snorted._

"_Typical." He dropped the arm and Molly gnashed her teeth, suddenly furious at his callousness- it was a child, you inglorious bastard!_

"_Show some care, you prat." She hissed and he stood up as well, suddenly a full head plus some taller than her. "This is not the time for your indelicate manners."_

_He finally looked at her, and she watched him narrow his steel gaze at her, her attire, even her shoes. "What are you doing here anyway? The pubs and all the flighty and meaningless interactions they encourage are west of here. People like _you_ have no business _here_."_

_It was like slap to the face and she reeled back, speechless. "I-I beg your pardon?" She hadn't been expecting that from him. He said stuff like that from time to time, but somehow, with the presence of a dead child at their feet, it was more potent in damage._

"_Oh, did I stutter? My apologies." He brushed past her and marched over to Lestrade, who had caught the last few lines of their nasty little tête-à-tête and winced._

_She refused to admit he wounded her with that sharp tongue of his. Lestrade had asked that she take a look, and while she freely admitted she was a tad over her head here, and partially useless, she was going to use what she did know. The sooner she did something, the sooner she could leave. Crouching back down, she carefully lifted a frail arm, taking in the skin color, the bruising of pooled blood, and the texture. She noted the brittleness of her hair, the peeling of her lips, the off color to the whites of her eyes, and the flaking of her nails. She took stock of all the protruding bones and sighed in sadness._

_This child died of malnutrition, exposure, and possible consumption of foul drinking water. She didn't see any signs of abuse outside of neglect. She would need to do a blood biopsy to know if there was anything more nauseating lurking where she could not see. Slowly pushing to her feet, she had to close her eyes to keep from looking at the broken body bellow her because it ached and tore at her, whispering things about her and the people of this city she wished were lies. Turning she called for Lestrade, and heard Sherlock say something rude, and then Sally call him a _Freak_ and she had to bite back a strangled scream._

_They had a dead child here, and they wanted to argue like immature wankers._

"_Lestrade!" She barked, and the three looked at her. "When can you move her?" _

_He blinked a few times before checking with one of the Forensic guys. "Now, actually." _

_Molly nodded. "Get her primed and ready to go. I'm not waiting on this anymore." She played sentry- refusing to leave the little girl alone even though she could no longer care about such things in the peacefulness that was death- until a gurney and two transporters arrived with a body bag, and then Molly felt like she could leave. "Stay with her?" She asked the closest one to her, and a woman looked up and nodded, a solemn air of understanding passing between them._

_Molly whirled around, pulling her gloves off as she went and deposited them in a red bio-hazard bag near where she had nicked them. Looks like she had to go break the news to Joe that their fun evening had officially expired- not that she would be able to enjoy doing anything after this. _

_Her heels clicked loudly off the crumbly brick as she made to pass Sherlock and Lestrade. "I'll be at the lab."_

"_Well how convenient of you." Sherlock deadpanned and she actually stopped to stare at him, confused._

"_Who pissed in your cornflakes, Freak?" Sally asked and Molly felt her own hackles rise in defense of the big jerk. Viciously tabling the question Sally asked even if it was a similar to the one bouncing around in her own head._

"_Stop calling him that, Donovan. You're too old for such juvenile behavior." Molly pointed out, determinedly ignoring that she called him all sorts of things silently and out loud on occasion. He was a prat, a jerk, or any number of things that linked to his appalling lack of manners and boorishness. He was decidedly not a freak, a monster, a psychopath or any such rubbish people like Sally enjoyed calling him._

_He was different, but he was her friend ultimately and Molly never did revel in people saying negative things about her friends._

_And Sally turned and lifted a lip at her. "What are you blind, Hooper? That's what he is."_

_Sherlock rolled his eyes, already opening his mouth, but Molly beat him to the punch. "The only blind person I see here, is you, Donovan. Only ever you." She said stonily, eyes hard as Sally met her look with one of her own._

_Lestrade finally found his voice- he was leery of 'cat fights' because they were a lot dirtier than regular fights and he was a gigantic chicken- "Alright, girls, that's enough." The last bit he handed to Sally with a rigid look of his own and Molly had to fight a severe eye roll. Way to tell her, Lestrade. "Molly, what do you have?"_

"_Nothing useful." Sherlock muttered, and Molly prayed for patience but caved a bit anyway._

_She wrinkled her nose at him. "You are a real piece of work."_

"_Thank you." He actually had the grace to look bashfully pleased. _

_What a dick. Sally was smirking at her, and Molly shared a tired look with Lestrade. "Unless…Sherlock has anything to the contrary-"_

"_A given." Said the dick._

"_-I believe malnourishment was the cause of death- she looks to have been starving for some time, though I won't be positive until I run her blood to make sure she hadn't picked up anything while trying to survive." Molly soldiered on. "I'll be at the lab in ten, just give me a few to say good bye to Joe."_

_Sherlock, of course, stilled next to her and she felt very nervous all of a sudden. He would say something terrible, she knew he would, so she rushed her excuses and scuttled back down the alleyway, after making sure the little girl was still being looked after. _

_He was going to be so mean; she knew he was going to be mean. He hadn't liked her talking to Doughnuts and while she could care less about what he thought on the people she liked since he kind of hated everyone unilaterally by their given annoyances or some such nonsense, he would not hesitate to share. He'd give sermons and pester her- because he couldn't handle not being listened too or well…he could, but she usually listened because it was easier than finding out the hard way how he was right._

_Because he was almost always right and she did not want him ruining this chance to have someone actually like her without baggage. Joe did not seem to be bothered by her scarred fingers, or the nasty bumped up flesh of the cut that healed on her hand- as a lot of people were which made her feel even more self-conscious then she was originally. He had stayed in encouraging contact- and was even doggedly angry when the _Sun _projected those horrendous photos of the night she was given her scars to the world- he hadn't left. He wanted to be near, and after having to do most of the work with all her previous dates and boyfriends, this was shoulder sagging relief. It showed that she wasn't some loser who scabbed for 'crumbs of affection'._

_She did not want this beautiful chance sullied because Sherlock could not plug that verbal leak. _

_And she had not told him. A break in standard procedure was either a sign of dissonance, or espionage he had told her once. Plus she always chattered at him about the people she was talking with because he was her unwilling, statue impersonating friend who flinched like she sneezed on him when she called him that. Sherlock had been around long enough, before a time where she really had Tara to girl talk with, that telling him stuff was just normal. _

_He didn't seem to care about the people in her life, but she was finding out that some things he did not appreciate being unaware of- because he preferred to know everything all the time, the Google. He despised surprises. _

_Well…tough. She wasn't dropping a possible good thing on account of this newfound territorial business._

_Joe was leaning easily against one of the Yard's cars, talking effortlessly with a cop about the last rugby match of which she knew nothing about. Upon seeing her stepping around bustling workers, he excused himself and straightened to greet her. _

"_All right?" He asked her, brow crinkling._

_She tried to smile, but knew she barely managed a bitter upturn of the lips. "Unfortunately no. I'm so sorry, but there's…." She lowered her voice and he leaned in to hear. "I have to get to the lab, and I'm so sorry, but we'll have to cut the evening short."_

_He, to his credit and her tormented relief, looked incredibly disappointed but understanding. "That's…a real shame."_

_She stepped closer, trying to ignore the dozens of people surrounding them. "Aside from this upset, I had a really great time tonight. Dancing is a lot more fun when you have such a dashing partner."_

_Joe grinned down at her. "Well that sounds like we might need to do it again and soon." She felt his fingers brush her arm and Molly shivered._

"_That would be lovely." She stepped closer- forcing herself to not think about PDA and who could be watching. She hadn't been kissed in Lord knew how long. _

"_Well, if you must know," His hand slid back to her elbow and a little further up her arm, and she felt a thrill shoot up her spine. "I'll be in London next Tuesday for another training session that'll eat up a good few days."_

_She smiled at him. "I suppose that's worth noting."_

"_Oh, it is." His eyes gleamed, and she fought down a goofy titter. He was going to kiss her! Yay!_

"_Molly! We have business to attend to!" Barked a familiar baritone. And she could have killed him! Ugh! Why Sherlock!? WHY!? Wasn't there something, anything else that could have distracted him for maybe ten more seconds?! Damn it, Lestrade!_

"_Uh…is that Sherlock?" Joe's voice changed, and Molly stepped back, moment ruined beyond repair._

"_Yes it is." She turned to scowl at the man in question, who was leaning casually against Lestrade's BMW like a damn magazine model._

"_What's he doing here?" _

_She wanted to say 'being a turd' but felt it might have sounded completely childish. "He's a Consulting Detective that works alongside Scotland Yard on occasion when a difficult case springs up."_

"_What's he want with you?" Joe looked down at her, a worried look making her heart squeeze._

"_Molly, this case won't solve itself." Sherlock sang, and she wished she had a rock to throw. _

"_He works with me too." She said carefully, desperately trying to keep from looking at the git or having a tantrum because he probably already solved it and was just looking for someone to pick on since Anderson was nowhere to be seen and she hadn't told him about Joe. It was her first date! For crying out loud! Have a shred of civility. She was allowed to not tell him this stuff every once and a while!_

_Joe was watching her. "He does?"_

"_Yes." She bit out, glaring at the irritating tosser as he smirked back at her. _

_Joe did not like hearing this, and Molly scrambled to salvage this situation, because if Sherlock somehow scared Joe off…_

_Why did he have to flare up now? Why now? He never acted like this before, but since the trial, he'd been so territorial and she couldn't afford to have that cloud her good thing with Joe. "He's just a fiend- er, friend. Sorry, he's just a friend. He's been around for years." Molly started to ramble with nerves, carefully not looking at the smug busybody. "Just a friend."_

_Sherlock was growing impatient, "Molly, you said ten minutes."_

"_I have to go, and not because he's nagging me like a ninny, but because-" she paused before bringing her hand up to her mouth and pulling Joe down so she could whisper to him. "- this situation involves a little girl."_

_He looked startled, eyes widening. "Is she alright?" He breathed into her ear catching quickly on to the fact that this was not for the general public yet as it was an ongoing investigation. With her head tilted, she caught Sherlock's ice cold glare. Tosser! She had to tell him something and so she glared back herself. Go away, Sherlock!_

"_No, she's…she's beyond help, but I have to go anyway and see if there's something that I can do that will aid in keeping this from happening again." She finished, before bravely pressing a kiss to his cheek. "Call me?"_

_He looked drugged as he nodded. "I'll talk to you tomorrow?"_

"_Yes, please." Molly wrapped him into a hug, and laughed as he squeezed her extra tight. _

"_MOLLY!" Sherlock._

"_Bye!" She kissed him one more time on the chin- just to cheese Sherlock off, and slipped from Joe's arms._

"_Good night, Molly!" He called, and she waved, smiling before repeating the sentiment and watched as he dipped under the police tape and merged back into the crowd. _

_Turning to face Sherlock, Molly braced herself. She was going to kick him in the- "What is your problem?"_

_Sherlock's scowl was truly impressive. "My problem is you're wasting time frolicking with whatshisface while a child's death needs to be looked into. You've been positively useless today."_

_Molly felt like she had whiplash. "Wait- wasn't it you that told me I had no business here? You don't need me; we both know that you are far from helpless at solving this, with or without me!"_

"_Well since you skipped out of work early today to go be more boring than usual with that office monkey-"_

"_So that's what this is about? I left early and you're mad?" She pointed at him before she twisted away in disgust to go find Lestrade. "You are such a brat, Sherlock, I haven't been on a date in a year- let alone have someone kiss me and you ruined it because you're mad that I left work a few hours early."_

"_Why the devil would you let a man who answers to a name like 'Doughnuts' kiss you?" He stalked her around the cars and officers, lowering his baritone to a deep grumble so the world wasn't privy to their little argument._

"_His name is Joe, and I know you know that." She stopped between the ambulance and the SCF van and spun to face him- almost losing her balance, almost. She needed the cover if she were going to murder him around all these cops._

_His face scrunched up. "How common and dull."_

_She glowered at him. "You're common and dull. And what's he got to do with you? Why do you care so much if I'm off on a date- oh!" Her face dawned in realization._

"_I don't care." He said immediately and she blinked. That was rather prompt and another nail into this coffin._

_So… "You're jealous." She said simply, and proceeded to watch him twitch and fidget. _

"_Jealousy is for simpletons." He chanted like a mantra. "I have work to do, and you are hindering those operations with your flights of fancy."_

"_You could just break in like you always do." She said heatedly, but he seemed to have briefly lost his hearing. "So you're mad that I left work early, and you showed up to an empty lab." It was her lab; she could theoretically do whatever she wanted since her wages were based on a yearly sum as opposed to hourly. She just worked extra hard because she enjoyed what she did and usually she liked having him around too. _

_Sherlock looked mad, however, and she was at a complete loss for how to get this argument onto a track she could follow and formulate a plan of defense from him. She was a hundred percent sure he was jealous- but what that jealously was stemming from she couldn't be certain._

_Normally, if a guy was jealous and a girl was involved, it was pretty self-explanatory, but she'd seen this particular man get his knickers in a twist if Lestrade was dealing with outside sources that were not Sherlock. It would be disastrous to let herself think it was because he was interested in her beyond a maybe friend. That was a one way ticket to suckville._

_Basically, attention reserved for Sherlock best always go solely Sherlock and no one, or nothing else because he was fundamentally a toddler._

_He seemed a little more off-balance than usual and she immediately constricted her eyes at him. If he had drugs, she would cut his balls off. _

"_Why did you leave your phone?" Wait, what?_

_That was not a question she had been expecting. "M-my phone?" She parroted unsteadily, caught off guard. _

"_Did you not want to be reached?" He sounded odd, and she wished it wasn't so dark or there was a streetlight nearby aside from the rotating cherries on top of the ambulance so she could see what he was hiding. Sherlock was a hard read when he wanted to be, but most of the time it wasn't difficult to understand what he wasn't saying by his facial expressions._

"_I-it wasn't on purpose if that's what you're asking. Tara helped me pick out an outfit for tonight, we had some wine-" Holy cow did he just growl at her? "- and I had to meet Joe at five. I just forgot it is all. It's on my dresser."_

_He seemed to swell up like a bull frog, and she nervously eased back from him. "You went out after drinking, with a random man sporting an alias like 'Doughnuts' and 'accidently' left your mobile at home?"_

_Basically, but the evolutionary process instilled some survival instincts at some critical juncture in her development, so she kept her mouth shut._

"_Christ, Molly, you're just asking for it, aren't you?" He grunted at her, shaking his head. _

_Low blow. "What- NO! And it's not like I didn't know him, Sherlock. He's perfectly fine-"_

"_Right, and you're background checks with the likes of Tara and Wade are truly sound works to live by."_

"_Excuse me, you've met him yourself! What's the big deal?" She said, stung. _

_Sherlock sighed, dropping his face into a hand, and shook his head. "I don't like him."_

"_You don't like anyone." She sniffed and he split a finger to glare at her._

"_That's not true and you should know it, idiot." _

_Ah, yes. Yes, that was true. But why did she have to be the adult here and apologize for her rude, half-truths? He never did. And she just answered her own stupid question. Best lasso this little fight into tighter quarters- she could hear the gurney coming. "Sorry," She bit out sourly and he scowled at her._

_Then he just sighed, rolled his eyes and angled to leave- and she blinked, startled by his dropping the argument HE started. "Hey, wait- Sherlock!"_

_He was ignoring her, and she felt something tighten. Did she miss something? He never bailed on their arguments like that- ever. He would ignore her, but he never walked out- unless the argument was over- or she walked off in a steaming huff but she never went far, she never left. This…this wasn't right._

_This wasn't how they worked._

_What was going on?_

_Did she do something?_

_Only one way to find out. She scuttled forward as fast as possible and shot past him just as he reached the edge of the SCF truck, hooked hard into him and slammed him bodily up against the driver's side door with a noisy bang. She might have been a little…impetuous about it, because people were staring. Feeling exposed for her forwardness and Sherlock's stiff shock under her hands, Molly summoned as much strength as she could and yanked him back between the two trucks and a bit more privacy. He really was heavier than he looked._

"_What the-" He was regaining his power of speech and she needed to move quickly before he brushed her off like a bug, as he was weirdly strong._

"_What is really wrong, Sherlock?" She pinned him hard, and could feel the taught line of him through his clothes. Firm chap, indeed-FOCUS HOOPER!_

"_Your girly strength is surprising." He said stupidly and she had to work to not bang her head against his chest in frustration. _

"_You have been in a mood all night and I know you pretty damn well at this point. You've been snippy and cranky since I got here- mentioning my work dodging, my apparent poor work ethic and then you skipped to Joe and my forgetfulness? What's the big deal?" He opened his mouth, eyes wide and dark in the poor lighting and she cut him off once more. "Do not play games with me, Sherlock! What is bothering you? Did I do something? Did Sally or Anderson somehow prick your armor? What?" She pled with him. _

_He was silent, staring at her as if he'd never seen her before. "Tell me." She said desperately, shaking him. "Is it the crime scene back there? Is that it?"_

_Man her own emotions were kind of out whack- one too many glasses of wine tonight. _

_He swallowed, and she watched his Adam's apple bob before he spoke. "I was just…" he was struggling to find his words and Molly only felt her worry sky rocket. He usually couldn't shut up- this was concerning. _

"_Why didn't you say anything?"_

_She felt her breath leave her in a sudden rush, and she sluggishly eased back from him. "W-what do you mean?" He wasn't looking at her, and she bent her knees until she caught his eyes. "What do you mean?" She repeated softly._

"_You talk a lot. All the time. You never mentioned you had a date with that pastry person. You never said you were planning to leave work early." It was like pulling teeth, and he did not want to really be admitting to this- she could see it in his face as well as hear it in his speech. She felt a little bad now, because she practically emasculated him- and he let her. "The receptionist said…." His jaw clicked shut and he pushed upright, finished speaking all together. _

"_Said what?" Molly asked softly, making room for him to fix his clothes. _

"_It's irrelevant at this point. She was wrong- emblematic of almost every half-witted person I've met." He snapped his suit jacket straight and brushed his shoulder of dust. _

_She grabbed at his hand, making him pause in his administrations. "What did she say, Sherlock?" She could feel a building dread in her stomach. She had a feeling…_

_He was sealing himself back up, retaining the air of impenetrable self-assurance, but at her beseeching stare, he shook his head a little, casting his eyes off to the side as the team carrying the body bag finally showed up. "That you wanted to avoid Sherlock Holmes."_

_She swore so hard he snapped his eyes to her. "God damn that-" She was going to punch herself. She was mad and she had no one else to blame but herself for muttering something like that- empty words, filler words- to Tara who would have no trouble parroting them to whoever took her place. _

_And Sherlock, poor Sherlock. _

_It sounded so stupidly harmless but the man had a complex over some things, and it had taken years to see some of these things- fears that he managed to hide so well. Things she had to piece together, things she had been told._

_Flipping Mycroft even said it and she still- "Shit."_

"_Molly?" He asked and she slapped her forehead so hard it hurt. _

'For all my brother's claims, being alone is not something he truly enjoys.'_ She could remember that conversation all those months ago as if it happened yesterday. Being told that she was avoiding him purposefully- Sherlock- someone she saw all the time, a friend- possibly her BEST friend- someone he sought out for his own reasons. Someone who he knew, even if he'd rather be tortured than admit to it, would take care of him. To be told by a third party, a disinterested third party who had no reason to lie, that she was trying to dodge him for no good reason other than it was HIM must have felt terrible. She could be over reading this, twisting it tighter than it was, building it up larger than it was, but why would he bring it up?_

_Why would he say that? Mention it at all if wasn't something he was stuck on?_

_Oh, and then she didn't have her phone…what a great way to get him going- because she never ignored him and on a day like today, when he heard something so causally damaging. And then she comes waltzing up with some random guy…_

_She hid stuff from him, and it translated badly into avoidance, deceit. Like she intentionally tried pushing him away. _

_The poor soul. She was so stupid! So incredibly stupid! When would she learn to stop leaping before she looked?!_

"_Sherlock," She started, hating herself so much at that moment, but she wasn't going to lie to him. "I did say that, and I never should have because I would never, ever, mean something like that. You don't like Joe, and I had a date with him that I was so excited for because he asked a week ago. I just…I just didn't want to feel pressured." She finished, almost whispering, voice being practically crushed under the loud banging from the ambulance behind her as they loaded it up for the morgue. "But I wasn't avoiding you; I just said something stupid because I wasn't thinking. I didn't tell you any of this because…" And she trailed off, looking at the buttons on his shirt._

"_Because why?" He wanted the whole truth, and she wanted to crawl into a hole._

_She heaved a shaking breath, scared, gathering courage from every area in her body, including the wussy bits behind the yellow stuff in her belly. "I respect your opinion too much to just ignore what you have to say. Yes, you say mean things, hurtful things- you kind of punt tact into the wall rather spectacularly- but you have a good beat on people and their motives. Plus you hated everyone from the night I wrecked myself, by myself, and I didn't know if I could trust that it wasn't a biased opinion I was listening too."_

"_Of course it's biased! They let you wander around a known sex trafficking establishment!" He said savagely and she felt her stomach drop out. Whoa, that was not what she had been expecting._ _Guess she was not going back to _Union Underground _ever again._

"_How could anyone- besides you- know that?" It was a rhetorical question, but Sherlock didn't do rhetorical._

"_They still let you go off alone, as drunk as you were. That's a breakdown in the social group structure, Molly- you weren't worth looking after!"_

_Shit, this was not how this conversation was supposed to be going. She needed to get him to focus on their original train of thought and quickly before he said something she would not be able to overlook. _

"_All I was trying to say, Sherlock, is that I wanted a chance to have something special with a guy who actually liked me. He is so sweet, and I could use sweet because I only ever get jerks and losers because I'm this close-" She held up her pointer and thumb, displaying a miniscule space between them "-to being that desperate idiot of girl people always assume I am. After everything this year, after Little-" Her voice cracked on that name, that infernal name! "- after, after the _Sun_, and the media, the trial, and just random people talking to me, cheering for me, and saying terrible things to me I wanted to just…to just be normal." She was desperate to get him to see this, and she had not missed the slow tightening of his shoulders as she listed everything from Little on down. He was shifting into overly aggressive mode, and there was no one here to channel that into aside from herself. _

"_Normal is boring." He rumbled at her, and she rubbed at her dry cheeks._

"_Normal is also safe- I don't cry myself to sleep if things are boring for a while." She sucked in a deep breath. "But, this isn't about me. That's why I kept my conversations with Joe on the back burner from you. That's why I didn't say that I had a date tonight. I never meant for that insensitive, stupid comment to get to you- I was just…fixated on you and mentioned it mindlessly. And I'm so sorry, so incredibly sorry that it hurt you."_

"_It didn't hurt me." He said, and she wanted to roll her eyes at his fib. He wouldn't have been a huge tosser and so pointedly cruel if he hadn't been wounded first. _

_He wasn't an open book, but she could judge a lot by the cover he was wearing. _

_The doors to the ambulance slammed shut, and Molly could feel the world shifting back into place- something she hadn't known was off to begin with- so star struck over a date._

_A good one. _

"_You don't have to like him, and I promise I won't intentionally keep this to myself- I didn't even know you listened to me." She sounded amazed even to her own ears._

"_You talk a lot." He said simply. "Like a chatterbox, and I delete as much as I can, but the sheer volume is incredible." He sounded like a battle scared soldier and she snorted rather un-lady like at what she was almost certain was a funny. Even if it was at her expense. _

"_You're a right prat." She squeezed his hand hard, before tugging him to walk with her down toward the end of the ambulance. "Are you coming to the lab with me?" Maybe if she sounded needy, he cave easier. She really didn't want to go and biopsy a little girl by herself. _

"_If you want." She about face planted at how easy that was. Jesus Christ, what sort of Earth tilting experience did they just have?_

"_There you two are!" Lestrade called, and Molly waved at him as he approached with Sally, Sherlock's hand still clutched securely in her own. Yeah, he wasn't escaping her anytime soon- at least until she could feel better about her gaff and how it hurt him._

_She needed to set Tara right- she also needed to watch the stuff she said. _

_Sally was eyeballing her hands and Molly just tightened her grip on him and tugged him closer. "Sorry, Greg, I was waiting down here for you after sending Joe off." _

_Lestrade was looking at her strangely too, but so what; she'd explain everything later to him. "You driving, Detective Inspector?"_

_He snorted. "I'm a cop, not your chauffeur." But he was already palming his keys. _

"_You'd make a splendid chauffeur, Lestrade. So you. Less thinking and more senseless action." Sherlock stated, and Molly sighed as the two cantered off into their little game of abuse they found so endearing. And she let Sherlock go so he could tag along behind a retreating Lestrade who was all but telling him to 'shove it up his arse'._

_Ah, boys will be boys. _

"_So you and the _Freak_ now, Hooper? A little sleazy, the two guys in one night gig." Ugh, Donovan. _

_She just smiled at the narrow minded detective, "If you haven't figured it out yet, Donovan, it's no wonder you're still at that rank." Shrugging she turned to leave, "Pity."_

"_What's your boyfriend going to say when he finds out you've already got your sights set on someone else? And a _Freak_ to boot."_

_And Molly snorted. "Sherlock's not the freak here, Donovan. It's the woman so blind and stupid she'd assume her first impression was the only thing that mattered, even at her age." She turned around to glare. "And stop calling him that. You're older than I am and I know that's extremely childish."_

_Donovan had an ugly look on her face, and Molly just lifted her chin as she turned to join the guys who were in some sort of heated argument about something ridiculous no doubt, satisfied she had put the snotty woman in her place. Sally had one last parting shot, however. _

"_Cute, Hooper, but I'm not the one chasing one man, and wishing for another."_

* * *

Clever girl.

Tell me what you think.


	7. Chapter 7

**AN-** It was my Birthday on the Friday the 29th and I planned to post this as present to you all. Spent Saturday recovering from the brown bottle flu...Sunday was Easter- Happy Easter guys!- and today is fittingly enough, April Fools day! Because Molly's ringed with fools. There was a point in there I'm sure, but whatevs.

Thank you all so much for you're input! You the reader! It's still so fascinating to me that you are enjoying this. It really is and it makes pushing these puppies out so worth while!

I can't fangirl like this in the real world! I'd be locked up. Also...this chapter was HUGE! Like...40K words in length- yeah I ain't that nice. I cut into it and that's what took so long.

_***italics__ mean past things_

Mistakes are reminders- check your work! They suck finding after posting!

**How Lucky You Are**

By: Berouge

Molly was well aware, since her early years in high school, that on a good day, her looks were passable fraternizing with cute – she at least thought so- and on a bad day, they were a few degrees south of 'woof'- she thought so too- and she was relatively okay with the middle ground of average because she'd always had other things, more important things to really focus on- namely school and work. Boys and relationships didn't come into the picture until much later in her development- she was a late bloomer but her 'am I ugly?' panic attacks were more prevalent stepping out of high school right into university where such things didn't quite matter as much anymore since members of her year were starting to focus on what she always had- work and school.

Oh, boy, but did she had her moments- what girl didn't?- and they were as terrible and self-destructive for her as any other woman her age, but she got through them moderately well and rekindled her focus into the important things like her future career, her schooling, and her family. Significant things that were not dependent on if her hair did what it was supposed to or if her mouth could have been a lot fuller- which it so could have- and these beliefs had managed to pull her through the upheavals and angst of her teenaged and early college years. Vanity had never been a trait she had meticulously or willingly cultivated for herself- what was the point? Being good looking only kept your grades afloat for so long before even they couldn't save you- which in hindsight was bloody fantastic because Sherlock was a right peacock in comparison and she could barely handle him, let alone a hypothetical past personal option she could have seriously entertained.

Sherlock and his sharp suits, fetching colors, imposing coat, loud wordy mouth endorsing how devastatingly intelligent he was like an alarm clock that was allowed to keep slipping off the snooze setting every five minutes- he was his own wonder as well as being bad enough for several egos worth of narcissism.

And vanity, especially his brand of vanity, came with a whole collection of mannerisms that a person could swap and try on depending on what fit their mood.

Sherlock was a big fan of modeling every single one at the most random and unfortunate of opportunities- how did she figure he was her best friend again? In what warped reality did she think someone who physically applauded the refulgence of a cleverly executed murder made a healthy best friend? According to the busybodies- cough, sodding Donovan, cough- she must have lost some screws when Little chucked her into that wall- that snarky woman was rapidly becoming her least favorite person in Lestrade's legion of pin balls, and hearing her announce an obiter dictum on two highly personal matters had her spitting mad, even if she was starting to give a infinitesimal credence to it.

The cow.

How dare she make a credible observation!

So what if one of her good friends was a sight off the mark and rather impressed with himself? Anderson was a flaming idiot and no one saw Molly pointing fingers and being rude- that was Sherlock's job- and she didn't take kindly to having that churlish heifer of a DS muttering things during check-ins and body drops. How many times was Molly going to have to refrain from having a fit over implied slights on the six foot consulting ulcer?

He was her friend- Sally and Anderson never seemed to get over it! That it was physically possible for someone to actually like Sherlock Bloody Holmes and that someone was Molly Hooper!

Sherlock, for his useless part, just seemed plagued with cramps when she had snapped the 'f' word loudly at Anderson when he had bumptiously addressed what he assumed was a Sherlock sensitive issue- that git could care less, it was Molly who nearly mauled the Serious Crimes forensics member in the lab during a seeing- who would _willingly be friends_ with the walking _psychopath_ that glorified brutal slayings?

Uh, she would- she should have been highly offended at this point in their friendship that the goofball still rolled himself into a wanker wad over the gushy sentimental moniker. Granted, she supposed him being weird about affection was highly preferable to him being emotionally injured by someone's dislike.

Emotionally injured Sherlock Holmes. Like water and oil- didn't mix right. His self-impressed…ness…came fully equipped with foot thick armor. Strange, it didn't make her sleep easier knowing he still faced such spite when he was out harassing the village.

She'd have stopped doing it, making a right fool of herself fighting off the rats in an unmoved Sherlock's defense- wishful thinking and it wasn't like he was helpless, but she couldn't just not say anything- if certain members of the Yard had the courtesy to bite their tongues from time to time- they just seemed to be getting worse, and she couldn't figure out if it was over exposure to the git, or if they weren't as disciplined as Lestrade had managed to lead her to believe. Sherlock's hellacious personality was as constant and steady as the Sun rising in the east, and he never cared, but for some deep rooted reason, SHE could not accept his nonchalance at this abuse- even years later it was enough for her lose her cool, which Donovan got to learn firsthand. He could be a pest, but he was her pest.

She could remember saying that to him, just to see what he'd do- and was disappointed that he didn't react and actually lectured her on something completely off subject.

Sherlock sucked sometimes.

But even on days when he appeared to have purposefully worked to earn those scornful rebukes and the name calling, when she was at her wits end with him in the lab, it only took the word _Freak_ to set her off on the speaker. He could probably shove granny off a cliff and Molly would totally blame her if she uttered 'freak' right before she tumbled out of sight.

It wasn't healthy, but far be it from her to stop her repulsed reaction to hearing the vile thing whispered from person to person in libelous clouds around a case he was called in on to assist them with.

_Freak._

How she loathed that word.

_She was shaking from the fury and adrenaline thundering through her veins, making focus difficult. Eyes locked on the face of the dead man on the table, Molly curled her fingers into the sheet she was holding up for the group at large to view the body and its patchwork of damage because this poor bastard apparently had drawn the phalanx attention of precincts far and wide despite remaining rather innocuous in nature aside from being quite dead, and the little side note of being a big fish dealer. Lestrade, Donovan, Anderson, some new guy named Todd, DI Dimmock and two of his lackeys were crowded into her morgue, discussing connections, motives, links, and other police things that frankly went right over her head…or at first they were._

_It wasn't a shocker- stuffing that many cops into a room from various other units and suddenly it was break time at the coffee shop regardless if a dead body was twelve inches away._

_This wasn't the problem- Lord knew she slacked off on the job enough for several people so she wasn't one to call attention to such instances. It was the bitch session about Sherlock, who wasn't even here as he was out doing all the work, which was eating at her manners and good mood. She wanted to remind them of who was doing the mental heavy lifting and it wasn't any of them- at least this is what it looked like to her. _

_Lestrade, in her grumpy estimation, just seemed drained and quite frankly exhausted of the conversation, having just accepted that this sort of thing came with the position he found himself in being lead dog and Sherlock's buddy- but he had to maintain a working relationship with these people and he was just one man caught up between Sherlock- who was a life saver in mystery but a problem in his own right- and his team- who were critical, mouthy, and in Molly's rapidly deteriorating opinion, largely useless. _

_He shut them down when they became too acerbic, but for the most part he had to just roll with the punches. Sherlock, he said, was a big boy, and could more than handle any of the garbage that Serious Crimes could conjure up and throw, but she did not care. _

_She didn't care that he rolled his eyes and sniffed pompously at the lack of creativity amongst the Yard ranks. She didn't care that he was blessedly unaffected and a good deal stronger than she was about name calling- he thought he was a wonder to mankind, remember…he gave vanity a poster child and popped collar._

_She cared a great deal- because it was a terrible, awful thing to say to him! He knew he was abnormal, that freak meant things like oddity or anomaly, and he was just peachy keen about it because to be normal was to be boring- or some rubbish to that nature, she had been too busy being mad to really listen to him explain it. To her, freak was a harsh sounding dig at his persona, his special gift that made him so damn valuable to the ignorant wankers of London's MET and NSY, and how dare they…try…attempt…to make him feel bad about it!_

_Even if he was being a Class A prat with a heavy side of tosser, he used his special talent for a respectable purpose- he was a good person who desperately wished to shed that idealistic sound bite._

_Lestrade was shackled to a desired smooth working relationship with these…people, but she was not. _

_She had no compunctions or hesitations towards Lestrade's team because without her, they were up a creek without a damn paddle- or at least until they could find a replacement- but out of respect for her role, her position, and poor Lestrade who did not need her attitude on top of Scotland Yard and Sherlock's antics, she swallowed her pulsing temper, once, twice…_

_They had mostly just shat on Sherlock's prickly behavior- and she ground her teeth and stared hard at nothing, or Lestrade, who looked a little more ridged and uncomfortable because he hated the slander just as much as she did but had far less control over it- even DI Dimmock had a few choice words and she counted down from thirty. _

_But it was when Anderson and Donovan shared a look with each other and said simultaneously 'What a _Freak_' that she reached her limit and lost her cool. She didn't have much power beyond the walls of the morgue- very little within them in fact- but she did have enough to make things difficult and press her point- one which most ignored because Sherlock was just too outrageous._

_She threw them all out of her lab- and there was nothing any of them could do because cadaver viewings were at her discretion and if she said no, outside of board intervention, which there wouldn't be because Donny Mathews had bigger issues to deal with than huffy cops wasting his pathologist's time, they were regulated to the same humdrum rules as the public._

She figured it was the first time in living memory that she and Lestrade had a mutual disagreement- as opposed to him doing something utterly stupid and hurting her feelings- but she wasn't budging an inch and he was just damn lucky she didn't ban anyone- Anderson and Donovan. He never said anything about Sherlock that wasn't directly to Sherlock's face- because he was a good guy and Sherlock's pal- but she felt he hadn't tried hard enough to keep his goons in line and on task. Points against him, because she had been feeling particularly protective of the insufferable man recently for reasons she didn't fully understand herself but knew they had related to her dating someone again- Sherlock was acting weird about it, and she didn't know how to un-weird him back to normal.

"_Molly," Lestrade was actually mad. "Be reasonable. We are working on a case! This could be seen as a form of infringement of an ongoing investigation."_

_She was unmoved, and not at all impressed. "Clearly, you need to work on your team's time management and conduct, Detective Inspector," He winced a little at the title, because she never called him that, and all but cringed at her criticism, because how could he argue against the truth? "Your team just wasted forty-seven minutes of my busy day complaining. I have it on the minutes. I have families to call, and body's that need attention, so unless you want to make an appointment for another time to start what you never began, Tara will assist you."_

_He was beyond frustrated as she held her ground outside the double gray doors- his team and Dimmock down the hall in reception no doubt bitching about her too- "Molly, Sherlock is not going to collapse into a sobbing mess over the stupid shit Anderson and Donovan manage to dream up." He tried soothing her ruffled feathers and it back fired on him._

"_He might not care, but I do." And you should too. It was the silent bit she left off, but Lestrade was smart and loyal and heard it loud and clear. Hunching his shoulders he glared at her._

"_Molly, I don't like it any more than you do, but I can't silence my team every time he does something to offend them. It's not a totalitarian regime, it's a loose chain of command that keeps going up, and they are people too." Rude ones._

_She huffed, scowling up at him. "Right, well this is my lab and all that fall under my control are subject to my rule- Anderson and Donovan are not allowed here without prior notification and only through appointment from now until Christmas." That would keep the buggers out of her hair._

_Lestrade gaped. "Wha- Molly! They are my team! You will not do that!"_

_Watch her. "I'm serious, Greg. I'm sick of their 'freak' this and 'freak' that business. Sherlock is my friend and if you are going to have him help you, than have the decency to keep your team under control in my morgue."_

_He was ticked. "Molly! This isn't high school! Sherlock isn't a baby, and you are being unreasonable-"_

"_He doesn't let them get away with it when people say things about you." She hissed and Lestrade seized up. "He shuts them down before they know what's hit them."_

_The DI mouthed for a second, clearly not expecting this- she had heard him do it from a distance, that night of her failed date and the horrible discovery of that poor child, right before they disembarked for the lab. Lestrade had to go find someone for something and two guys she didn't know made a quip about Lestrade's competency and Sherlock heard. He wasn't sentimental, but it had been established for some time that Sherlock was protective of what he deemed his. Lestrade was his favored DI; therefore, Lestrade was off limits to all but Sherlock in Sherlock's presence. _

_It was surprising to see, and yet made perfect sense. Plus, Molly felt the long suffering man before her deserved to know that Sherlock's git tendencies came with a few boons of friendship as well- not that she had originally planned on hitting him over the head with it like she had just done. _

"_You keep them quiet and I'll reconsider." She finished, glaring down the hall at a sneering Anderson- who Tara had no doubt told to 'sod off' at this point because she thought he was creeper. A badly regrouped Lestrade was struggling to make her see reason, but ultimately gave in- because he must have felt guilty, and he should- muttering a tense 'good bye' he turned and left._

She had secretly wondered why Lestrade just didn't come in by himself- she would have let him because he never said anything against their mutual wacky friend. Lestrade was rather fond of Sherlock- it was plain as damn day to see despite how he suffered because of it. But did he really need Detective Smart Mouth and that moron Anderson to be present? And why did Dimmock have to come that time too? He was a grouchy old man and had a special place in his soul for Sherlock hating- all because the consulting detective made one little slip up and outted his son as gay, something Dimmock could not forgive because he had latent homophobic issues. Or so she highly suspected and because Sherlock said so.

She would have thought he would rather go and instruct green horns on appropriate behaviors amongst the citizenry and proper public service protocol than enter into what was, by all accounts across the board, Sherlock's hidey hole. Lestrade must have drug him up- she couldn't imagine him coming willingly- by telling him the six foot whirl wind of intellectual dexterity was off hustling dealers and smugglers for clues- something that Lestrade was not thrilled about knowing that he could do.

So imagine her shock when it was Sherlock who her dear DI sent to reason with her. Sherlock looked highly confused- or was intensely constipated- as he drifted into the lab two days following the great purge of the law and mentioned that Lestrade wanted access.

"_Lestrade needs to see a body, but as to why he texted me to inform you of that-"_

"_Tell him his 'team' needs to make an appointment, just like everyone else." She interrupted bitterly as she carefully dropped the glass slip onto her loaded slide, sealing in her sample. Sherlock, for his part seemed perplexed- or supremely disinterested, it was a hard to tell when she was busy not looking at him. She actually had to pause and shake her head in amazement that he had tried using Sherlock to bridge a social hiccup. Lestrade must have been truly desperate. _

"_Anderson?" _

_She pursed her lips irritated at hearing the name but not at all surprised he was fishing around her cold demeanor for what was setting her afoul. She sighed. "Are you working on the Mills case? The one with the tiny drug dealer?" _

"_Solved it. Dull. Uninspiring." He reported, eyes zipping over her, catching nuances she wasn't sure were supposed to be there, the little traitors. "Why is Lestrade texting me to speak to you?" Ah, the group dynamics were giving him trouble, hence the curiosity, and because in the normal order of things, she and Lestrade got on famously all the time. This disturbance in his little world was bugging him as it was obvious that Lestrade hadn't the cojones to communicate to him why they were having a minor domestic. She garnered all this from his telling her what Lestrade said since he usually didn't pass messages on because he couldn't be bothered to be decent like everyone else on the planet._

_Then what he said caught up with her huffy disposition and ruined it. She sighed, hand already reaching for the phone in deep resignation. "It's a moot point now." She may be annoyed, but she wasn't petty, nor unprofessional enough to keep the truth undisclosed from the proper authorities, even if Sherlock chose to purposefully be forgetful in that regard. _

_Lestrade had been relieved at her phone call- probably aided by the fact she had good news concerning his case- and slunk in later that day with a fat sack of Greggs pastries as a peace offering. Sherlock had been bored at this point by their little dispute and hadn't bothered to comment. This acceptance was sponsored by the fact that she let him pick a level five bio-hazard in reward for a job well done- he was on a severed hand binge at the moment and all but twisted himself into intellectual hysterics over the possibilities._

Utterly high on himself, Sherlock was. His vainglory knew no bounds and he made sure those that didn't understand, were completely aware of just how far they fell in comparison. How many times she found herself on the receiving end of one of his 'how wonderful it must be inside your vapid little mind, all that room to stretch' comments- they came in a myriad of forms and levels of offense, but she was seldom put off by them now. She had a sneaky suspicion he could sense it too, because his salient attempts were becoming more and more…pointed. Sometimes they were mean, sometimes they were just shy of deceptively amusing, but all were increasingly more refined in a way that just stating she was ignorant no longer sufficed. Now it was a compilation of the evidence as to _why_ she was displaying such ignorance.

Verbose git.

For instance, her dating Joe- who Sherlock _did not like_- had inspired many lectures and orations on why she was making a mistake settling down- wherever this was coming from, it was deficient and stupid and needed to go back to the factory since they had barely been officially dating for two weeks. Sherlock appeared lobotomized with disinterest when she pointed that out to him, stating they were just figuring out where they stood with each other and having fun while attempting it before he cantered off into one of his lists of deduced reasoning of why Joe was insufficient- he complied these while in social retrograde on his couch, or hiding behind his microscope. For whatever the reason, there were three points he always came back too- like a disapproving parent in a lot ways- which was super annoying.

Firstly, the nickname 'Doughnuts', for whatever made-up reason in his vast and wacky brain, was truly tragic and inexcusable and he did not hesitate to flog her with it.

_-"Doughnuts! What sort of image is he wishing to convey with such a farcical byname? By the way, you've gained weight haven't you? Of course you have. Four? No, five pounds." _

"_I- oh, my God, Sherlock!"_

"_Lay of the pastry, perhaps."_

"_Jesus! Go away!"_

Man, she wasn't a thin mint, and had a tendency to be a little on the buxom side of things- Kitkats in all their magical healing abilities bore a price, one she was more than willing to take on- but what girl liked having her weight catalogued so specifically like that? And how did he _know_? She had spent hours trying to see how he could tell where the weight was showing- admittedly, she didn't think five pounds was much of anything, but having someone like Honest Abe Arsehole at the lab point it out made it feel like it was twenty five pounds and she should be very concerned. He was making her as vain and full of herself as he was!

He was a butthead to give her such a complex.

Secondly, there was the whole career aspect of 'Doughnuts' and how mind-numbing it was. Sherlock, the tosser he so beautifully embodied, did not hesitate to ask if he was entombed in the fast food industry somewhere. When she had snipped that he was in marketing for a logistics company, Sherlock was so unimpressed he looked as if he were going to suffocate under the tedium of the words.

_-"How boring."_

"_Shut up, he's fun!"_

"_Domesticizing already? Were you always this potentially stale?"_

"_Were you always this jealous?"_

"_I'm not jealous."_

"_Then why do we always talk about Joe?"_

"_Because it boggles the mind that you would willingly choose such an insipid dullard as a companion."_

"_You're an insipid dullard!"_

"_It's a wonder how you managed medical school with such lackluster focus on the details."_

"_It's a wonder that I don't choke you with the way your jealousy makes you so rude."_

"_I thought we established that I am not jealous._

"_Lie to yourself all you want, you are so jealous."_

"_I'm not jealous!"_

She found that if she pointed out he was being jealous- and he so was- he'd derail and back off for a while. Sherlock was like a damn bull with his tenacity at hammering his points and views home- he did not care for her dating any of Wades friends because they couldn't be trusted to tell their asses from their elbows- that wasn't an exact quote, but he had been loquacious and glib and she felt dusting off a dictionary to translate what he said to be over kill and a sure fire way to encourage his antics. The thing was, Sherlock jealousy was a highly concentrated version of childhood jealousy- Lestrade could be a psychologist…or a git interpreter with his insights- in that he did not relish sharing anything that fell under his convoluted territorial expanse of that which he considered 'his'- the lab, the city cabs, interesting cases, any serial killer within a hundred clicks of London, and by extension to these things, herself and Lestrade. Sherlock was possessive- yeah, not as romantic as it had always seemed in her head- and he became almost destructive in his attempts to keep what he deemed 'his' where he thought it should be. What this meant in layman's terms, was that she came with the lab package- she furnished him bits and space for him to do what he pleased and Lord have mercy on any who tried to pry that from him. While this was…hugely insulting at face value, Molly knew for a damn fact it went deeper than that, and wasn't remotely put out like Tara demanded she should have been.

He didn't want to share her attention; she could work with that because it meant he cared a great deal despite words to the contrary.

Also, Molly hadn't bothered to clue Tara in on all the small moments between her and the consulting detective, the ones that were most precious and carried the most weight in terms of importance. Like them hanging out, trying to cheer- or in his case, monitor and scowl until she was normal- each other up when the other was down for the count. How he kept her company when she was scared, and how she had looked out for him when he couldn't do it himself. How they huddled over bodies and discussed experiment data, and put down articles in a well-respected science journal Bernard favored- they were pretentious and boring anyway and Sherlock had managed to disprove a few of them out of spite for a writer he actually went to school with. Molly didn't talk about how he made her laugh- because most of it was at other people's expense and she was thoroughly going to Hell for it- and she didn't share how their bickering had evolved into more match like competitions rather than point wars.

She kept his secrets- the drug problems and rehabs, the bad days where he wanted to tear his brain apart just to shut it up, and the quiet vulnerable moments where he was more boy than man- and in return, he allowed her to lean on him when her business threatened to suffocate her under the reality that she wasn't as strong as she wished she could be- which embarrassingly happened a whole lot more to her than it did to him but she supposed that was okay.

He had a reputation to maintain and she was lucky she hadn't gained one for being such a cry baby- it had been an admittedly rough year.

Theirs was a unique relationship of give and give and take. It was unbalanced and hectic and she wouldn't change it for the world. He was flawed and tough and rude and brilliant, and she adored him for those qualities because despite everything, he had still managed to affect change, bring closure to the grieving, and made a damn difference in a city that sometimes seemed to be full of nothing but bastards and problems- despite his best efforts to be just self-fulfilling and all while remaining a good person. Yes, she knew she had looked at him with something akin to mild hero-worship when he managed to do what others could not- he intensely frowned upon such imagery, which was nothing new since he frowned on everything at some point- but it was hard not to see his work and be completely floored.

He had made the impossible, possible, and it was impossible for her to not believe in him.

And this led to issue number three and quite possibly the trickiest and most hazardous to her budding relationship with Joe:

Joe liked Sherlock about as much as Sherlock liked Joe.

And Molly wasn't stupid enough to not see the potential for a disaster long in the making.

_She was rushing to finish up her autopsy log- she hated rewriting her findings out after recording them as it was such a bloody waste of time- but she had a date later and who could be bothered with paper work now?! Typically, she lazily put the logs off until the end of the week, procrastinating on the laborious monotony of listening to her voice- she didn't sound like that- and copying word for word with little thought points here and there or expanded explanations in the margins. She would put them off much longer if she could- indefinitely- but experience had shown that anything beyond the eight day mark meant she'd be hard pressed to catch up. _

_She paused considering- seriously considering- dropping her log and leaving it for later. She and Joe were going out tonight as he was down from Manchester for a few days for spot training in the new facility and really, she wasn't all that interested in…what was this anyway? _

_Grimacing, she tipped the packet into the light of her desk lamp. "Aw crap." She forgot to write down the name and case file…for three pages. There were at least thirteen cases on her recorder- she could die of old age trying to relocate the appropriate start gap._

_There was a soft snort from nearby._

_Groaning, she shifted to pull her recorder over- now she'd have to find the start of this autopsy-_

"_Higgins, file SBDL3412, case number 119." Sherlock rattled off as he used the sleek microcscreen monitor to compare soil samples from a crime scene. "I'm sure you can manage the next two pages."_

_She sighed in relief. "Thanks. I thought I'd have to listen myself again to relocate the start."_

"_Hence my intervention." There was a ninety eight percent chance he was making fun of her, but she was going to just pretend he was being helpful. She scribbled what he said down, before she forgot the minute details and had to ask him again- in which he'd just pick on her without the cover of bogus 'niceness'._

_Peaking at the clock, Molly calculated she could push it another ten, maybe fifteen minutes before she should be on the next train home, and as that thought settled, she let her eyes drop to Sherlock, who she hadn't yet informed she was leaving early…_

_Er….wups. _

_It had been a few weeks since he revealed his thoughts on the matter of her withholding things from him- he did not like it- and she had gone out of her way to be accommodating and not because she felt some need to please his lordship like a rug maid. She had felt terrible that he thought she was purposely being evasive and sneaky- for a man that loved mystery, he sure did not like it within their little circle of friends…er…their little triangle of friendship._

_The triangle of trust. _

_She hadn't forgotten but he had been super grouchy about her bailing on the work day early the first time. She was unsure how he'd react to the news that she was planning a repeat and quite frankly she didn't want to argue with him as he had been in a rather pleasant mood all day- because someone had been graphically smeared all over the walls out near the docks and the answer wasn't stupidly obvious for him- and she was dreading ruining it._

_However, the longer she put it off… "So, just so you know, I'm leaving in ten minutes…to…ah…"_

_He had lifted his head slowly and fixed that cold gaze of his on her, the one that could see what the vertebrae of her spine looked like, and her voice rattled off into nonexistence. Steel blue eyes watched her every move and Molly squirmed in her chair like a small child expecting a dressing down._

_Well…fudge. "I have a date at five." She told her pen conversationally. "We're going to the movies." _

_There was a scoff, and he turned back to his work. "Sounds exceptionally boring. Joe will love it."_

_She waited with bated breath to see if he'd continue or not- if he did then she would have to actually rise to her date's defense and while that sounded terrible of her, if she pointed out his comments irked her, he'd dig deeper. The work to keep Sherlock from saying mean things was not worth the battle- she'd never win that one in a trillion years. Luckily, he seemed content until she started shuffling her papers into order and putting her outgoing paperwork into the right tray-_

"_Wait, ten minutes? If your little bore fest-"_

"_Prat."_

"_-begins at five, why are you leaving at two thirty?" He steamrolled right over her as if she weren't even there. _

_Molly could feel the pressure of making this argument stay reasonable and calm pressing on her temples. "I'm a girl. Girls need time to make themselves presentable. Two hour minimum." _

"_That's absurd." His voice clipped out._

"_No, it's called preparing for a date." She pulled a file toward her and stared at it blankly before shutting and leaving it lying in the center of her desk. "What guy wants to take a mousy pathologist fresh of the line, wearing no make-up, and in a mustard stained shirt to the movies?" And she wished with all her might that she could retract that sentence._

"_Any guy with a name like 'Doughnuts' should consider himself fortunate that natural selection hasn't offed his chances-"_

"_NO! NO! Don't finish that sentence!" She squeaked in a panic. They were not going down there with him acting like this- he would just insult her to kingdom come and back._

"_For a forensic pathologist, you're rather squeamish about human nature." _

"_For a grown man, you're rather a brat." She exhaled. "And besides, it's not like my leaving will disrupt your work. Bernard doesn't fight your existence anymore and Tara is here until nine tonight. You have hours to muck around."_

"_How do you know that? I might need coffee! I can't just disentangle myself from thinking for such mundane undertakings!"_

_Molly looked heavenward. He was something else... "How inconsiderate of me…"_

"_At least you recognized it this time." _

_She scowled at him as she snatched folders off her desk. "Don't you have a case to solve? You were adamant earlier that I not bug you with my breathing."_

_Sherlock crossed his arms as he glared at her. "Rather uncharitable of him to agree to a five o'clock time slot when you clearly work."_

"_Would you rather I go out later?" She asked flatly as she plucked the appropriate paper work from under her daily collection of sweet wrappers to dump on Tara._

_He rolled his eyes. "I'd rather you not waste my time with this."_

_She wrinkled her nose at him. Really? He made it sound as if her dating someone was a personal burden to him. What a git. "I'm going to pretend you said 'Have a good time on your date tonight, Molly' and just leave it at that."_

"_Delude yourself all you want, it doesn't change the fact that this is highly inconvenient." He grouched as he refocused on his analysis. _

_Ugh…right. Time to go. "I'll make it up to you later if you promise not to touch, take, or displace any of the bodies in the stores. Oxford put in a request for hearts and what's one more on paper." She grumped back at him- she didn't really want to make anything up to him since he was being so childish, but leaving him unsupervised without incentive to behave himself was just shy of tremendously stupid. Another head recently went missing and she had chosen to not even make the slightest fuss- it had been a scary looking bloke from one of the prisons and she was happy he was out of her cooler and in Sherlock's flat somewhere so he could deal with it. The head looked suspiciously like Count Orlock's…_

_Molly had struggled to not tape garlic to the large walk-in as a precaution._

_Sherlock was displeased but she wasn't all that concerned. He'd get over it- or just sulk until something far more interesting stole his attention elsewhere- which could happen at any given moment so why fret?_

_Loudly flapping her papers at him- just to irritate him- she pottered down to reception to drop off her completed transfer slips and a few police autopsies for DI Dimmock- who had made several comments on her work ethic himself, the old bastard- to come collect whenever he got around to not being a gigantic prick. Tara was tapping away on the computer with torpid resignation of the fact that she was going to be staying late to file all the backlogged cases- something she had to do twice a month now that the morgue's load increased. This sounded like nothing, but Tara, despite all her girlie, airheaded proclivities, was remarkably efficient and succinct in her work. Once, Sherlock had muttered something along the line of Tara giving Anthea a serious run for her money in the field of secretarial oeuvre. Molly wasn't certain what he meant, but it didn't sound like a total put down. Still, if she was being kept late for this stuff, she had Molly's utmost sympathies. _

"_Sherlock may be staying." She winced in regret as she sat her stack down on the counter and Tara blinked owlishly at it._

"_Doubt it, but thanks for the heads up." The younger girl jabbed a finger at the three inch pile. "How come you let these things grow so big? Are you trying to make me lose my mind?"_

_Molly sighed. "I'm long winded according to Bernard."_

"_So it's you! You're the reason?!" Tara gaped at her in faux indignation before turning back to her monitor. "Get out."_

_She shrugged. "Okay. I have a date anyway."_

"_Oooo, where too this time?" Tara schmoozed, immediately twisting back around and propped her chin up on her palm, watching Molly as if she were the most fascinating thing she'd ever seen. "You've done dancing, dinner, the zoo, the Eye, the Saturday market." She listed off on her fingers. _

"_You know too much about my personal life- I do not remember dishing on the Eye." _

_Tara giggled. "Joe called Wade and because the bro code doesn't hold up for these things and Wade wanted to watch his zombie movie instead, I got to talk to Joe."_

_Figures. Molly snickered. "He chatters more than I do?" _

"_Like a high school girl." Tara agreed reaching for the top folder in Molly's stack. "He's nothing but a river of mush for you."_

_Something warm and fuzzy lodged itself near Molly's jugular and she thumbed at the corners of a pile of logs. Normally this was never the case with her former boyfriends- loser, jerk, nice but dim- and it was so…so…wonderful…so unexplainably endearing to finally have that happen to her. To be the one gushed about instead of the other way around. She'd always been the girl passed over- the sweet but naïve wallflower- for the more interesting, or alluring creature standing beside her. Joe was affectionate, patient, and kind, and gosh darn it did she need those things in her life at the moment. "He's a prince."_

_Tara grinned up at her. "He's also going to be left waiting if you don't shake a leg! Tell Sherlock to suck it up and go have a good time."_

_Molly laughed and Tara winked at her as she turned and bustled back down to the lab- and a surly Sherlock who was petulantly having none of her happiness business near him. He muttered nonsense at his microscope as she gathered up her belongings- tracking her phone down took a lot more work because Sherlock had sticky fingered to send out random texts full of things she could not fathom- and made for the door, but not before she ruffled a hand through his hair in passing his work station._

_His loud complaining followed her to the double gray doors and Molly had to practically gag herself to keep the snickers under wraps._

_By the time she arrived outside of one the smaller cinema complexes, Molly's buoyant glee at seeing Joe already there about sent her heart into an arrhythmia. He dimpled at her and she grinned back before she pressed in close for a good squeeze- something he was rather brilliant at- and together they ambled into the cinema's dark interior to buy tickets. _

_Whatever movie they were seeing- some foreign film about a WWII Nazi love affair that had won best picture at some film festival she'd barely heard of- it totally wasn't anything either of them was in to. They spent the majority of the three hour film giggling, making fun of the ostentatious lead character, and having silent, but furious popcorn fights._

_It was a wonder the hipsters in front of them didn't turn and avada kedavra them for spoiling the show. _

_By the time they stumbled through the front doors, they were wheezing from hysterics. Molly had to lean up against the wall to control her breathing as Joe braced his hands on his knees. When their fellow movie goers toddled out behind them and glowered at their continued mirth, Joe decided it would be best if they skedaddled down the sidewalk, less the throng of wronged college kids decided to lecture them._

_They picked and grazed their way across town, munching of street vendor delights and sipping bottles of tea and pop. Somehow, they eventually ended up moseying along the river front walk, chit chatting and laughing about everything and nothing- a rather marvelous spot to take in the night scape of the city. Parliament and Big Ben were lit up and glittering off the Thames in a mesmerizing dance and Molly stopped to brace herself up on the guard rail, the cool breeze most refreshing after a long, stuffy summer's day._

"_Indie movies aren't really my thing, I suppose." Joe grinned impishly at her. "Just an excuse to impress."_

_Molly flashed a cheesy grin at him. "Impress? Well, that idea needs some serious work."_

"_No it doesn't." He brushed up against her side and she shivered. "Who ignores a deep intellectual thinker who is also sensitive and…other sappy stuff that girls like." _

_She was giggling like mad as they all but rotated around each other in some odd not dance, teasing and touching and just having a bloody good time._

_Just as Joe was leaning in for the kill- about damn time too- lips barely brushing hers- a phone rang obnoxiously loud, startling them enough to jump. _

"_What the-" Joe twisted to look at the red phone booth a few paces behind them. As if sensing their stares, the telephone fell silent after two more awkward rings. Molly titled her head before giving Joe an affable shrug. Whatever, weirder stuff had happened. _

_She reached a hand up to Joes face and proceeded to draw him back down to her when the ringing started up again, thoroughly snagging Joe's attention from her. Sighing, and trying to contain the disappointment at having her moment ruined again, Molly tapped his cheek with her finger. "Let it ring." She suggested, hoping that she'd be more than plenty enough to lasso his focus. The ringing stopped and Joe just turned his face back toward her with the goofiest expression._

"_I saw a horror movie start off like this one time. Romantic location, pretty girl, studdly guy…then the telephone box starts ringing and it all goes promptly to Hell at the hands of a psychopathic killing machine." _

_Oh, well that was comforting. "Did they answer the phone?"_

_He smirked at her, barely blinking when the red booth fell silent once more. "Well I don't remember. I just recall something a little more…personal." And he dipped down and captured her lips._

_For all of two seconds before they were interrupted- this time by an incredibly uncomfortable woman._

"_I-I'm terribly sorry to bother you." She cleared her throat and Molly about jumped the rail into the Thames trying to break away from Joe. "But, I'm looking for a Molly Hooper?"_

_She had her hands fisted in Joe's shirt sleeves to keep herself grounded, mind oddly slow, she had to work a few times to get her voice to return to its post. "Th-that would be me." She stuttered. "Can I help you?"_

_The woman was obviously as flustered as Molly was but trying to wrangle herself back in. "There's a person on my phone that wants to speak with you?" She hesitated as she held out her mobile, and Molly had to jog her manners to remember to accept it._

"_Er..Hello?" She said delicately into the stranger's mobile, afraid of mucking it up somehow even though it was lent to her of free will._

_Or not._

"_It would be highly prudent of you to charge your phone before venturing out." An aristocratic voice crooned down the line at her and Molly's eyes bugged out as she turned to gape at the woman._

_How the Hell did he do this? "My-Mycroft?" She asked just to make sure her assumption was on the mark. A supercilious thought wafting briefly across her brain that was reminiscent of a git muttering about sloppiness and assumptions made her feel better about probing the obvious. If only minutely._

"_Very good." She bristled at his condescension anyway. "Now ask Mr. Doognerts to extract his phone and wait for the call." He disconnected and Molly blinked stupidly at the two people standing in front of her. Pulling the phone away, she gave it a once over to make sure she hadn't dirtied it somehow before handing it off to the woman dying to leave. "Thank you, ma'am."_

_She nodded tensely and all but scuttled off, looking back at them once to see if they were possibly following her._

_Ugh…_

"_Joe, may I borrow your phone?" She asked belatedly as he slanted a look at her, quietly extracting his mobile- that was already freaking ringing- from his pocket, brow crinkling as he took in 'blocked' heading on the ID screen. _

"_Who is Mycroft?" He asked quietly as she surrendered to its insistent buzzing and gave him a truly apologetic look._

_Mycroft was apparently not pleased to be kept waiting those few precious seconds in between unwilling phone partners- Holmes's and their bossy, presumptuous, demanding, infuriating, oh she could on- and didn't even let her suck in enough air to speak before he was condescending all over her evening once more. "-promptness is a problem as well. I need you to go get, Sherlock."_

"_I- what?" She asked, dumbfounded by everything- this was happening too much as of recently._

_There was a heavy sigh and she immediately gnashed her teeth in annoyance. "Sherlock has lodged himself in a bit of a situation down at New Scotland Yard. Detective Inspector Lestrade called me and I am occupied elsewhere at the moment in France."_

"_What did he do?" She focused on the important facts first and not about how the desire to hang up made her fingers twitch. "I just left him not four hours ago at the lab- he was behaving himself!" She said that last bit like should hold some sort of weight in the large scheme of things._

"_He's ravenous insistence for a good murder no doubt." Mycroft grumbled. "Lestrade won't post his bail without considerable headaches from overhead and as I cannot physically be present to sign his release forums, you are the next available option."_

_Jesus, she was going to kill him. Wait. "Can't we just leave him there for a while? I'm a little busy myself!" She added looking at Joe, who hadn't moved and had an odd gleam in his eyes. _

_Crap._

"_Do you want to deal with him after being locked away for hours on end without sufficient stimulation?"_

_If this was any other person, anyone else in London, that they were discussing, she would have said 'sounds good to me', but it was Bloody Sherlock Sodding Holmes! And he would tear everything apart in his flurry of energy and fury. He'd be a right pain in the rear and probably say douchy things because someone had managed to cage him against his will._

"_No…" She groaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. "No, I don't fancy that at all."_

"_My apologies for the inconvenience, Ms. Hooper. Please inform my brother that I will be in touch soon." He ordered imperiously before disconnecting- again- leaving her with a whole new problem and a yet ANOTHER ruined evening to look forward too._

_Sodding Hell. She was never leaving work early again- she'd just call in sick and damned be the 'crisis' that arouse in her absence._

"_So…what was that all about?" Joe inquired politely, hands shoved deep in his pockets and Molly knew immediately that he already had a good idea._

_She rubbed ruefully at his smart phone's screen, wishing she could erase the conversation and redo the last five minutes without Holmesian interpolation. "The man on the phones- and I have no idea how he did that with the booth but at this stage, not a whole lot surprises me anymore with him- was Mycroft." She started slowly as she held his phone out for him to reclaim. _

_Joe just waited for her to drop the device into his hand. "Oh?" he said lightly and she swore at Sherlock and Mycroft in every language she knew. _

Joe…Joe for all his wonderful traits and sweetness and patience, did not like Sherlock one bit. They had been dating for almost a solid month now, and the six foot genius had rapidly become a thorn in their perfect little world. At least for Joe he had, as Molly was more than used to the whirling wiz kid blasting into situations and scrambling up the order. Sherlock demanded a certain level of constant attention and with her dating someone she wasn't as 'emotionally' accommodating as she had been while single. Nothing changed at work or with her job- she always came in if the police needed her, but she spent more time chatting with Joe on the phone at lunch or in between autopsies and boring paperwork, but Sherlock abhorred this change in dynamics because that had always been quiet time or bicker time, and he wasn't one to hold his piece on something that bothered him- they had their go around, several of them- and she had to resort to pointing out his jealousy- this was rapidly losing potency, soon he'd be immune and she'd be lacking a arresting defense. Joe, because he had friends in Wade and Tara, who both worked near and with Molly- and Sherlock- heard about all of this. Not that Molly was one to go and expound on these moments because that was just plain stupid- not mention highly out of context and Sherlock probably came across as a truly terrible individual- but somehow Sherlock's inherent rudeness and mouthy disposition always made it back to Joe. He didn't like that Sherlock 'bossed' Molly around- he didn't really, but Molly wasn't one to fight over dinky useless stuff and Sherlock always reacted better to her demands if she gave ground in other areas, but Joe didn't care. Sherlock said rude things to her, he did to everybody, and Joe took serious offense because he apparently felt it was his job to protect her. She didn't have the heart to tell him that she could more than handle Sherlock's wanker tendencies, and Sherlock positively boiled when he first experienced Joe's 'stepping in between'- 'bloody interfering' Sherlock had snapped and Molly quickly separated them by dragging Joe off to lunch.

Molly wasn't a fool, she knew that her friendship with Sherlock would inevitably test her relationship with any guy she happened to attempt a romance with and she had promised herself that she'd deal with it as best she could when that time came- and for a while there, it had looked like a distant horizon she'd never see or have to worry about.

Then Joe happened.

So she had chosen the cowardly way and just elected to ignore there even was a problem because what was she meant to do? She'd asked Sherlock to not be so offensive and he had just grunted, and she accepted and translated that as a 'sure thing, Molly'. She had also informed Joe that Sherlock was harmless and he grunted something about 'it not being right' which she also superimposed to mean 'understood, no worries here.'

It was a brewing problem- and looking back, she could see how she had aided in the destruction- a problem that was probably going to blow up in her face at some unassuming spot down the road.

Most of the complications stemmed from, sadly, Sherlock and his wackiness, but what could she do? Seriously? Sherlock could be highly irritating with his impromptu flights of fancy, his smothering dialogues, and space consuming habits, but she'd long learned to live with them. That's what made Sherlock who he was, what partially made him so fascinating. But at some point she had realized while watching the interactions of people around him, a person either had to let it go, or walk away from him. For instance, Bernard had just given up and let Sherlock get on with it, as had, shockingly Tara.

Oh, the receptionist and the git had their moments- their squabbling was of a different caliber, like two little kids- but Tara wasn't so quick to dismiss Sherlock either. Bernard once told her that if she was out, or not in for the day, Tara assumed Molly's role of Sherlock sitter and they were most amiable about it.

Whatever that meant…

Joe was still getting used to the oddity that was Sherlock Holmes and she was desperately trying to smooth things between them so he could just…just see what she saw and not try to dissuade her from interacting with Sherlock- Joe hadn't yet tried and she feared the hypothetical day because it was non-negotiable and would not end well for her. Sherlock would either come around, or stay staunchly bratty, but she felt she could manage him well enough that he wouldn't purposely antagonize Joe- she had nearly three years' worth of experience at wearing the detective down on some things- she almost had him to the point where he didn't automatically chew on the students that came to the lab for course work.

It was a thirty step program.

She was being stupidly optimistic as well.

_She was pissed._

_Here she was, on a date with a lovely person who she happened to get along with so easily it just worked, and Sherlock decides to expand his criminal résumé! _

_And Joe was…Joe was not pleased. "And who is Mycroft?" He asked again and she could feel her jaw rust as she worked to gather the strength to spear their date in the gut, hating that she would do it in the first place because her reckless buddy landed his butt in the clink._

"_He's Sherlock's older brother." The skin around her eyes tightened as he stilled halfway through Sherlock's name, a sinking feeling trickling down her brain to her stomach. _

_He smiled at her, and there was a brittleness there she was unused to seeing on his normal jovial face. "And, ah, what did he do that _you_ need to go take care of?" Molly swallowed nervously; what idiot girl wanted to tell the guy she was dating that she had to break their date to go post bail for their pain-in-the-ass best friend who also happened to be another guy that he didn't like?_

_She wasn't completely stupid! But she could only put this off for so long- Mycroft seemed the type to keep calling until his will was completed, and anyone who had the time to hack a phone booth from France and then a stranger's mobile, and then her date's phone just to tell her to go do something would have no qualms about doing it all again._

_Dang it… _

"_Sherlock," She started with a huge sigh, "Sherlock, is, ah…he's well…I need to go pick him up from Scotland Yard." She explained poorly, cringing about telling Joe that he was currently behind bars because he said or did something rash or illegal._

_Probably._

_Joe's face slowly folded into a hard frown. "Why do you have to do it? You aren't his sister or caretaker."_

_She wasn't his family- she could be labeled as a caretaker, or babysitter- and because Sherlock Bloody Holmes was her difficult best friend. "Lestrade…probably put him there and Mycroft is in France." She rattled off._

"_So?"_

_She didn't want to tell him she couldn't think of there being anyone else to call- Sherlock didn't have many friends. "I'm the next best option." She paraphrased Mycroft. "I wish I could just let him stew for a few more hours, but that's really a very bad idea."_

"_Why? He doesn't understand common courtesy to others." Joe reasoned smoothly and Molly blinked._

_Of course he didn't, but that was only half the problem. "Lestrade doesn't want him left in his jail cells for too long. He suspects Sherlock scares or indoctrinates the other 'guests'." She improvised on a whim. No matter if she felt that whim held a boulder of truth._

_Joe sighed as he looked out over the river and Molly felt…unsure for the first time. Sucking in a shaky breath, she stepped forward and put a hand on his arm. "I'm really, very sorry about this." _

_She was skinning Sherlock. And Lestrade. And mailing Mycroft a pipe bomb._

_Those asshats never let her have damn moment!_

"_I am really very sorry that this happened- again. Look, if you want, after I go spring him, we can go…" Where? It was getting late and they both had work in the morning. "Go get and ice cream?" She said a little desperately. Ugh! She was begging!_

_How ridiculous and unappealing…begging for this date to stay afloat from a guy who was no doubt put off. She was so embarrassing…_

_Joe looked down at her and sighed, "Sure, Molly."_

_He knew it too._

_Heads were going to roll! _

_They caught a cab and rode the entire way in silence, er…near silence- Molly couldn't help the relieved babbling she sometimes did to fill awkward silences- but even she couldn't keep it up for fifteen minutes straight without getting annoyed at herself. Joe, for his part, played attentive if quiet sound board and Molly was tempted to just throw herself out the moving taxi into oncoming traffic to escape the terrible awkwardness._

_What a dreadful way to move an evening along with a person you were still trying to impress! _

_New Scotland Yard loomed suddenly out around a corner and she scowled at it as if the fools inside could somehow feel her wrath as they approached. The cab pulled smoothly up alongside the curb and Molly dug money out to pay the fare, all the while grumbling to herself about tossers, wankers, and asshats. _

_She turned to Joe and offered a cheerfully false "Shall we?" _

"_Actually…I'm a little tired, Molly." He started and she felt something akin to horror drop into her belly._

_Aw…hell. "O-oh." She cleared her throat, desperately trying to keep a bottle on her wounded feelings._

"_It's- uh…I had a good time before." He waved his hand and Molly could only nod, feeling intensely uncomfortable and foolish with this conversation taking place with an audience of one, in a steadfastly not listening cabbie._

"_S-sure. That's…I had a good time too." She told him, feeling the need to wrangle a promise of a phone call from him but lost on how to do so._

"_I'll…I'll call you." He said, eyes guarded and she gave him a hopefully encouraging look. _

_Please do…_

"_Thank you, Joe." She smiled sadly at him as she slipped from the back seat and watched as the taxi pulled back into traffic where it was soon lost with its swarming brethren._

_They hadn't even ended their date with a hug…_

_They always ended their dates with a hug._

_She stood there for a moment longer, feeling abandoned and hurt, before slowly turning to drag herself down the sidewalk toward the gleaming front doors. She'd only ever been up NSY headquarters once or twice before, and never to collect someone from the holding cells. So she had to get a few instructions- because of COURSE she was at the wrong bleeding end of the building- and distinctly ignored the judgmental looks of the staff who stared at the lone girl out to collect someone from the metal bars of the law._

_Tossers._

_High heels clicked down a now empty hallway as she felt the night's events weigh hard on her shoulders, making her feel both exhausted…and still very much hurt. It really wasn't Joe's fault- how could she blame him? What guy found this attractive? What guy liked having dates broken by police intervention with a side of Sherlock Bloody Holmes?_

_What guy wanted to stay and deal with this? If the roles were reversed, would she put up with it? The constant possibility of broken dates? They hadn't been together nearly long enough to have securely cemented foundation to weather these things._

_He'd be a massive fool to want to stay._

_That didn't stop her from hoping he would call, and not blaming him if he didn't._

_Groaning, Molly stopped to check her directions once more in the glass and metal maze, before toddling sluggishly down the next hallway. Palming an eye, Molly quietly raved at the unfairness of it all- she had done nothing, not gone out, sat at home watching _Supernatural_, how many times in the last week? The one night she gets to have Joe, and BAM, this happens. Did they do this on purpose? _

_Did they know how upsetting and hurtful this was? _

_Her temper flickered, but at this point, she just wanted to go home and mope. She could always be angry tomorrow…if she didn't die of humiliation tonight at possibly being dumped outside of New Scotland Yard. _

_Pushing through a heavy door, she ended up off to the side of a large reception area that was more lavish than she would have expected. She could see down the hallway toward the doors that led out into twilight London and something told her to pay attention when she left to where they were located- not that she had any intention of collecting from here again._

_Shuffling up to the counter where a bored cop sat sipping tea and watching a football match, she waited patiently until he slid his chair up to the window. _

"_Name?" He greeted indifferently, barely giving her a second look._

"_Molly Hooper." She pursed her lips as his eyes finally flashed to her, not even entertaining the idea that she held a reputation in this stinking place._

_Because that's all she needed. _

"_Business?" _

"_Collecting an idiot." She offered wearily. _

_He didn't smile. "Through that door, first right."_

_She dipped her head in thanks before moving off to follow his instructions so she could get this done and be home within the hour. Rounding the corner, she came to another station where two uniformed officers sat watching the same match the first guy was and as she stepped up to that counter to capture their attention, and froze in surprise at seeing Ben the Cop staring at her from his place beside his fellow officer._

_Well, didn't she have all the ruddy luck? There best be some folks winning the lotto and beating cancer for the crap heap she kept getting slapped with tonight. _

_He cocked his head in confusion. "Aren't you supposed to be on a date?" Of course he knew…_

"_Yes." She said and tried not to cringe at how sullen that sounded. "But I've been summoned." Figures it was Joe's friend Ben that was going to be handling her transaction today._

_His partner seemed to finally remember that there was a protocol that needed to be followed. "Name and who are you here for?"_

"_Molly Hooper, here for Sherlock Holmes." _

_They both stilled and she stared flatly back at them, unimpressed with their theatrics. She watched as the one cop that wasn't Ben reached for the phone. What, were they planning on arresting her for associating with Sherlock now too? That would just be utterly fantastic. Perfect end to an abysmal evening…_

"_Sir, Molly Hooper just turned up." He rumbled into the mouth piece and she sighed loudly._

_Ben was shaking his head, still watching her with a worried expression. "Where's Joe?"_

_She swallowed, not looking at him. "He went home." Stupid voice…broadcasting how upset she was without proper consent from cerebral headquarters._

"_Bummer." He sympathized and she only nodded as she looked at the scar on the back of her hand, adjusting the glittery bracelet so as to not draw attention to it._

_Setting the phone down, the second cop pushed suddenly back from his station and collected a clip board with a forum attached to it. "Fill this out. The DI should be here before you finish." _

"_Gre- DI Lestrade is coming down here?" She corrected her slip, aware that this was his place of work and that he did hold an impressive title, no matter how weird it felt using it. _

_Ben snorted. "Sure is. Told us to inform him when you turned up." Molly's brow furrowed at this news. She so wasn't in the mood for this. Inhaling, she tugged the clip board toward her and started filling in the blocks of information, struggling to not write snarky things like 'Sherlock is a humongous git' in the box under 'Why are you here'._

_It was taking a lot longer to do this than it should have- she kept spacing out, mind wandering back to Joe and how she screwed things up- so she didn't notice Lestrade at first when he all but slammed through an adjoining door. It was when he leaned up alongside the counter beside her that she acknowledged him by starting badly._

"_Where were you?" He asked tightly, and Molly felt herself shrink from the temper he was struggling to suppress. _

"_I beg your pardon?" _

"_I've been calling for hours." He shot a look to the unfinished paperwork between her hands. "You're still working on that?"_

_His attitude was just a bit much on top of everything else that happened that night. "Yes, actually I am." She snapped heatedly. "Excuse me for not being prompt."_

"_Do you have any idea of what I've been dealing with?" He growled, before stampeding right over her no doubt disrespectful response. "Sherlock blew up a damn shipping warehouse!"_

_That…that was not what she had been expecting. "I...what?! Is he okay?" She asked quickly, earlier anger reduced to a throbbing worry that lasted maybe five seconds as the reality that he was in lock-up and not London General caught up with her. _

"_Blew the whole sodding thing right to Hell and then felt the need to yell at the owners!" Lestrade was obviously having his own conversation, because he just kept ranting at her as if Sherlock's new arson career was somehow her fault. "We've been swamped trying to keep this by the sodding book!" He shouted at her._

_Molly's hands tightened into shaking fists. "Why are you shrieking at me? I didn't set the thing on fire, nor encourage him to do it."_

"_You wouldn't answer your damn phone! You never answer your damn phone! He's dismantled two of my holding cells already from being cooped up and you were off who the Hell knew where! I had to call his brother Mycroft and it took _**work**_ getting that information from that flipping- I didn't even know he had a brother!"_

_Why was she catching so much slack for her phone etiquette? No one ever called her normally. And why was Sherlock's reckless abandon for the law and rules her fault? She never encouraged his illicit activities...outside of bit nicking- which so didn't count! "How does this translate into me getting yelled at-" He buried her argument easily._

"_Go get him out and take him home!" Lestrade barked inches from her face and Molly actually leaned back before she heard one of the guys scuttle from their spot to fetch Sherlock._

_Molly's heart was pounding hard in her chest, but whether it was from anger, hurt, frustration or just plain adrenaline she didn't know. Lestrade was as angry as she'd ever seen him and she was at a loss for what to say that wouldn't push him further overboard. Trembling, she dropped her eyes to the still uncompleted forum. Picking up the pen, she hurried to finish the questions, desperate to just go home. His yelling was the final straw. She needed to go home._

_She had a serious inkling that she was going to cry and no way did she want to do that here. She could have a fit at Lestrade another day, she could pitch a damn bitch some other time, but for now, she just wanted the day to end._

_Worse day ever._

_She heard Sherlock coming long before she saw him- he was muttering and the cop with him only seemed to agitate him further. Rounding the corner, she felt Lestrade tense and she sped up the last few questions, not caring that they were quite possibly illegible._

"_I best not find that holding cell tampered with, Sherlock." Lestrade snarled at the accused. _

"_Still besieged with ignorance are you?" The consulting detective harrumphed as the officer unlocked his handcuffs. _

"_You're antics are going to get you killed one day and I'll be damned if you drag this institution down with you!" His voice cracked loudly over her head and Molly just nudged the completed forum toward a busy Ben who was smartly trying to keep from drawing attention himself._

"_Oh, I'm terribly sorry, I wasn't aware your lot had the information as to the true nature of the situation." Sherlock flippantly waved his hand, and Molly accepted another clip board with little 'x's that needed her signature next to them. "You single handedly could have killed off a whole slew of Serious Crimes."_

_Oh, he did not…Molly scribbled her signature faster, sensing the temperature in the room drop below freezing._

"_And what the fuck did you think you were doing? Setting that thing off like that? We have rules and regulations-"_

"_None of which would have mattered in this instance, Inspector-"_

"_They are designed to keep from getting people killed unnecessarily-"_

"_And they wouldn't have worked this time around since you had a crew come barging-"_

"_You're as bad as Molly about listening you sodding-"_

_She dug out her bank card and handed it and the last sheet back to Ben, who was watching her with something close to concern as Sherlock and Lestrade continued to tear into each other, their voices becoming an extremely volatile white noise. Ben hesitated with her card, before sharing a look with the cop next to him, and slowly extended it back to her._

"_You alright?" He asked softly, words practically crushed under a loud outburst from an enraged Lestrade. She sucked in a breath to tell him 'yes' but decided there was no point in hiding it anymore- her anger at how unfair her evening had been would not be heard in this melee of testosterone. And thinking about it, she didn't really want to share her failure and possible being dumped because she had picked her friends' childish BS over a worry free Joe out by the Thames._

"_Not really." She sighed, letting her swimming eyes sink to her scarred fingers, and blinked when her green card was pushed under them. Looking up, Ben just shook his head trying for a weak smile as a particularly rude insult from his DI thundered overhead spurring Sherlock to out stripe him spectacularly. _

"_-You could have killed my people you smart mouthed-"_

"_-Unlikely it would have been me getting them killed as you haven't figured out how to-"_

_She rubbed at her temple, as she stuffed her card away and quietly asked if there was anything else they needed from her. Off the hook, tired, and fighting back building tears, Molly turned into the fracas as Sherlock built up a head of steam to rival Lestrade's. _

_She first checked Sherlock- she knew him to be fine with the way he was having such a fit- he looked a little singed around the fringes, hair crazier than ever and smelling faintly of char and smoke, but otherwise perfectly fine. As he flung his hands around to make his point, Molly shifted slightly to catch one- he actually kind of slapped it off her arm by mistake but that slowed him down enough for her to grab hold, dragging his rant to a sudden stop as well. Heated steel blue eyes locked on her with such a force she felt it so she quickly looked elsewhere to deliver her parting._

"_I'm going home." She told his chest as silence settled uneasily around them, unable to meet anyone's eyes. "You're free to go."_

_With that, she spun and scurried from the room, legs rapidly eating up the space that stood between her and the front doors, ignoring the suffocating silence that prowled behind her retreat._

_She checked the clock in reception that told her she had a mere five minutes to make it to the nearest tube station if she wanted a cheap ride home. Bursting from the front doors, Molly hustled out onto the sidewalk, and started up Broadway- she knew there was a station around here somewhere- and hoped she was traveling in the right direction. She had minutes- she was not taking a cab or a flipping bus all the way back home._

_Scuttling around the corner of St. James's Park, she saw a tube station sign and sped up, feeling the pressure of time and tears egging her on._

_It was so hard holding back a good sob session in public, but she had thoroughly mangled her emotions for one night and adding public spectacle of humiliation was not on her bucket list. _

_She diligently followed the markers and groaned once she saw it was a district line as opposed to her normal one…she would have to do a carriage change, but a line change was better than no ride at all. Swiping her train pass, she wiggled past the gates and exhaled in relief at having time to spare in the near empty train depot. Sulking toward an empty bench, Molly sank down and tried to remain composed, before giving in and burying her face in her hands. _

_What a terrible, no good, very bad evening. Her mind looped over her conversation with Joe, and she quickly dug out her phone- knowing it was dead- but still praying that maybe there was something left in the battery to power up for her check for one missed call._

_It was very much dead, and she scrubbed at the skin under her eyes, wanting more than anything to be at home where she could let herself go. She slowly dropped her face back into the comforting pressure of her hands and she sat like that until the train came thundering into the station, and then assumed a similar pose until her next stop where she switched trains once more and continued looking and feeling miserable. _

_Thank God the carriages were near empty this time of night- thank God she didn't have a curious audience, because she stared at people trying to hold their shit together by the skin of their teeth and didn't want that happening to her. She was tired of the public exposure- had enough of that to last twenty lifetimes. _

_By the time she was stumbling up the stairs to her flat, she had tears leaking silently from her face as she was no longer able to hold them back at the thought of sanctuary only being mere paces away. Pushing into her flat, she slammed the door, kicked off her shoes- tears running messily everywhere the entire time now, coupled with the occasional whimper. _

_Stupid boys. _

_She dropped her purse in the middle of the floor and her mobile sprung free and skid toward her couch. _

_She thought about leaving it, but decided ultimately that if Joe did try and contact her, she needed to have it charged up. Snatching it violently off the floor, she shoved the charger cord into it and hurried off to bed so she could cry._

_Never once did she look back to see if Joe had called._

She had been upset. It was hard to hide how much so the next day as she drooped into work, hoping she'd see Tara so she could get some much needed girl comfort and advice- Tara was fantastic at both and would probably have something to say from Joe's end. But Tara wasn't in yet- because she refused to be anything but precisely on the dot of eight, so a resigned Molly had slunk past reception down toward the lab.

Joe hadn't called and she felt like an ogre because of it.

Years later she would remember, because Bernard wouldn't be around forever and despite his displeased disposition on everything, he always had supported her like a caring father or grandfather figure. Seeing him putzing around the lab, doing something with blood centrifuges calmed her, because he was consistent and uncomplicated, and when he turned around and saw her, he dropped everything to engulf her in a much needed hug and gave her the best insight to a problem she didn't even realize she had, though the signs were as big as double decker buses and twice as flashy.

"_Molly, what happened?" He asked as she let her forehead thunk solidly against his shoulder. He smelled faintly like cinnamon or some sort of spice and she sagged a little more into him and told him in a muffled voice about everything that had transpired the night before._

_How she had been so excited to see Joe, how their date had been so much fun, and how the phones started to ring…_

_The realization that Sherlock had needed her, and the consequent stiffness of Joe because of it…_

_The cab ride…departure at NSY headquarters…and her hurt feelings…being dumped…_

_She was sniffling miserably, not full on bawling because that would have required making more tears and she was pretty sure her reserves were all stored in her pillow at home. "Why am I so upset over this?" She asked out loud._

_She maybe knew why- she did know why. Being dumped sucked; it never got easier when she really liked the person._

_Bernard was rubbing a hand in circles on her back, comforting her in a way reminiscent of a beloved parent. "I think it's the fact that he couldn't accept that part of your life that's hurting you the most."_

_She paused, head still buried most securely between his shoulder and neck. That wasn't what she had been expecting. "I…" _

_What? "What?"_

_Bernard had always reminded her of a kindly looking Santa Clause impersonator- an ingrained happy look, twinkling eyes, beard and moustache whitened and kept to a proper length- and as he smiled at her, she had a feeling he knew things she did not- not a surprise really. "For three years- or near that- I've watched you become a key member of this facility in both your work and proficiency toward getting the job done right the first time. I've watched you grow and suffer and learn and prosper and most of it has been at the side of that brilliant nitwit Sherlock Holmes." He said kindly, dragging a thumb over her cheek to catch a few stray tears. "Where most people would have bricked the front door to keep that nutter out, you not only welcomed him in, but all the chaos that came in the form of New Scotland Yard and the MET."_

"_The police came before Sherlock. It's kind of the other way around." She pointed out, briefly wondering why they were talking about him as opposed to Joe- who she was upset over. She didn't want to talk about her wanker friends who liked to make her life hard and ruin her chances at a successful date._

"_Not to the extent that they are now. The DI, the one before Lestrade, and Lestrade now, normally never involved himself so directly in the affairs of the dead outside a folder of information, but that was before. Sherlock's methods, while highly unorthodox and quite possibly illegal, deliver unprecedented results favorably to the proper authorities."_

_So…he was criminally brilliant and the fuzz liked that. Big deal. "Maybe I'm just a little slow today…" She offered, hoping he'd make his point in a way her muzzy head could wrap itself around. Clarity Bernard, please._

_Bernard just grinned at her. "Detective Inspector Lestrade and Sherlock Holmes are part of the all-encompassing package that comes with Molly Hooper. I had to accept that your involvement with them went both ways and that nothing I could say would dissuade you from keeping them- mostly Sherlock that thief- at arm's length."_

_She sucked in a breath. "But, what guy would want all that? What guy would tolerate having their dates stalked by ringing phones and being broken by cops…and…that stuff." She added uselessly, trusting he'd get at what she was trying to say. _

"_A guy that wants you more." Bernard said and she felt distinctly cheated when he offered nothing else up. _

"_That…that, while very sweet, doesn't help me solve my problem." She groaned, sponging her dribbling nose on her sleeve and not caring how it looked._

"_It's something you need to realize though." He tugged her over to a stool. "You're too loyal to those boys. You won't leave them if you think they need you, and any guy that feels it's either him, or the highway, needs to man up." Her eyes jumped to his face in surprise. "This isn't an all or nothing situation, and anyone who asks that of you is not the man for you."_

_Uh…Sherlock. "But…Sherlock…" She started; unsure where she was going with that but she knew was probably along the lines of 'Sherlock is that selfish'._

"_He's a box of possessed crazy and arrogance that one, doesn't like to share. He's selfish, but not to the point of demanding you pick only him. He complains- about everything- but that's about it. He doesn't keep you from Lestrade, or that Wade fellow, or Tara." He explained. "It's not the same. Sherlock's always been a huge support system for you, but I've never figured out why you'd pick that maverick. He likes severed body parts the way most men like a cold beer on a hot day."_

_She snorted wetly. "I just…I just really wanted…" What? To have what? Joe assent to this part of her life without complaint? To agree to broken dates and interfering cops and Sherlock's unique brand of intrusion, strip search, and seizure? To shrug and say 'off you go' during anniversaries and other important events? Was that even fair to ask, despite Bernard's statement to the contrary?_

_Did she even know if these sorts of incidents would be common place? Twice could have been just a coincidence. _

"_You need to find someone who won't force you to choose between these people you love so dearly, and a normal relationship." Bernard offered gently. "Because the flavor of the month will never hold up against those idiot boys you have hooked your trolley too."_

"_But…normal is safe. I need normal." Didn't she? There was enough unusual in her life for several people._

"_Not if normal forces you to choose. You will never walk away from them. I don't think you physically would be able too." She let her eyes sink to her shoes, and tried to think of something to say to that. "I want you to be happy, Molly. That's why I never truly fought Sherlock's presence in the lab- despite how many rules and regulations were shattered because of it- he was, is, good for you, just as you are for him. Lestrade only added to it and before I knew it, you had a little family of weirdoes clogging my morgue." Bernard continued, looking thoroughly put out about it. _

_Her smile wobbled at him. "It sounds like you think I should be dating Sherlock or Lestrade." _

"_Heavens, no!" He looked appalled. "They are ridiculous. No!"_

_She did laugh at that. _

"_But they make you happy, and it goes both ways." He continued resolutely. "I cannot fault them for that."_

"_What should I do about Joe?" She asked quietly, not feeling any better about how things went last night, but no longer automatically whipping herself about it. Bernard had a good point. She would never walk away from her boys- even if she they were complete wankers and hurt her feelings with their stupid wanker antics. _

_Asshats._

_He took a seat beside her, and tipped her chin up. "Firstly, not feel bad. If he chose to leave, that's his choice and his loss. You're a sweetheart, and deserve better than a temperamental adolescent who cannot distinguish between duty and desire."_

"_And if he comes back?" _

"_Then you need to make it clear that this is a fight he won't win. He can either hop on board or get the Hell out of your way. I don't want you feeling like you owe that young man anything and I'm sure Sherlock or Lestrade will be more than happy to assist in that department. Lord knows Sherlock was distinctly put out that you left early for…what was it? A 'dyspeptic inducing occurrence'…or some such nonsense."_

_She giggled, tired, but feeling a lot lighter than she had when she first pushed through her double gray doors. "I'm not exactly pleased with those two at the moment."_

"_Welcome to my world. I think Sherlock 'misplaced' that Nosferatu looking cadaver head. I needed it too." He said blandly, watching her twitch with a raised brow. "I know you didn't fight to keep it strictly safe, either."_

"_It was creepy." She defended weakly. _

_He nodded his head agreement as he heaved a sigh at the lost cause. "Feel like helping prep some limbs for a lab practical for Cambridge?"_

Bernard had made a solid point, one she would carry with her for years to come, and as she worked diligently alongside her mentor and friend, letting him sooth her burned feelings and taking the stress off her shoulders for a time so she could focus on resetting her equilibrium, Molly repeated what he told her so she wouldn't forget again.

Only a moron would ignore such sound advice- she would not be that moron.

By the time eight rolled around, Molly felt good enough to talk to Tara, who came barreling into the morgue in a panic the second she got to work, armed with sickly sweet coffee and a bulging bag of pastries.

And as they had a girl conference, one that Bernard was unofficially initiated into despite his protests that he knew nothing of 'modern dating', Molly managed to convince her friend that, despite her hurt feelings, she would be okay.

Tara, in an amazing display of self-restraint, did not ask about what she planned to do about Joe, if she should call him- Bernard about stroked out on this because a 'lady should never have to do the calling'- or if she was just going to let it all go.

"_He talked to Wade, that's how I even know." Tara said carefully, coffee lodged firmly between her hands as she perched on a stool across from Molly- who Bernard had let off the hook with the body prep because he loved her._

"_Wade mad?" She asked, playing with her pastry halfheartedly. She liked Wade, and didn't want to have things weird between them when he ambled down to visit Tara or when they all took lunches together._

_Tara flapped a hand at her. "He's a guy. They are a lot more accepting of domestics between dating friends then girls are."_

_Molly bobbed her head, staring at nothing when Tara tapped her hand. "He's right you know." Jerking her eyes up, Molly cocked her head, seeking clarification on what she was talking about. "Bernard."_

_Oh, yes. Yes, she knew that. "I still feel bad."_

_Whatever Tara had been about to say, was cut off as she sat up straighter, all but glaring at something over her shoulder. Molly groaned, knowing there could only three reasons for this and the first one didn't count and the second two were asshats that she was miffed at._

"_I'll talk to you later, Tara. Bernard needs some help-" She turned and stopped talking at once. _

_Joe stood just within her lab, holding the prettiest spray of rainbow daisies with a hesitantly hopeful look. _

_Tara cleared her throat pointedly and Joe raised his hands as if she were holding a loaded gun at his head. "I'm seriously not here to rock the boat, Tara. I've already been warned."_

_Molly shifted nervously, at a loss for what to say. She turned to see that Bernard was staring hard through the windows but pretending to be checking stuff off on his clip board, while Tara was just plain scowling without restraint. She wasn't kidding about girls being less civil thing…_

_She was like a stylish Pitbull some days- it made Molly grateful to have her at her back._

"_Uhmm." Molly started weakly, not at all sure what she was supposed to say with an audience watching so closely- granted it was Joe that was on the shitty end of the confrontation and not herself. _

_That was something she figured._

"_I'm sorry." He took the reins without indecision. "I'm sorry about last night and I'm sorry that I wasn't more…considerate about the situation."_

_Tara made a noise behind her but Molly refused to turn around- she'd get the full analysis later._

"_I shouldn't have left like I did and I know how poorly that reflected on me. I've thought of a hundred excuses and they are all lame enough to not bear worth repeating." He stepped forward and ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up. "I'm just…just know that I am really sorry."_

_She nodded, because she was forgiving soul._

"_Can you forgive me?" He asked anyway as he edged closer- Tara hummed behind her like judge- "Can we perhaps try again?"_

_Caution told her to think- the little flutter in her heart told her yes. "You…you need to know that…that I'm not." She stopped, frustrated that this was so hard to get out- it shouldn't be. "This isn't a competition; I'm not picking people over each other." She wasn't picking him over her friends, or vice versa because she was an adult and this wasn't recess in primary school where it was all or nothing._

_Joe sucked in a breath, an earnest look on his face. "My mistake- can't blame a guy for trying to hog you all to himself."_

_She offered a tentative up turn of the lips, praying that this would sink in- Bernard said get it out of the way. "If you can understand that, accept that, then all systems go?" _

_He nodded, and closed the distance between them. As his arms circled her, Molly let herself lean hard into him, closing her eyes to savor the moment. She really was missing a lot of affection in her life._

_It was pathetic._

_Tara snorted. "Took you long enough."_

_Joe shifted his grip. "Well…I would have been here earlier but Wade was a little cranky with me."_

_Molly snickered into his shirt. "Cranky? Wade?" She'd only ever seen him put out when the canteen didn't have his favored crisps in stock._

"_Apparently he agreed that if I was stupid enough to mess this up, then I truly was an insipid dullard."_

_It took a second for that to sink in. Agreed? Insipid dullard? Wade was rather intelligent but he didn't flounce around with language like…_

_Molly's eyes flew open as the niggling memory hit home._

_Sherlock._

She was surprised- beyond that really. She would not have believed in a million, billion, trillion years that Sherlock would have involved himself in something as inconsequential as her flagging relationships- he never did before.

She would have bet solidly on the odds that he desired the demise of such things as they upset his non-routine.

He was a Grinch after all.

She didn't ask Joe, because well…she was a little busy being happy he came to see her, but when he left, when Tara had mooched after him like ghost prepared to haunt him out, when all things returned to their rightful places, Molly wondered.

Did he go and talk to Joe? Or had Wade picked that phrasing up around the morgue when Sherlock had been in house.

It was as unlikely and fantastical as any fairy tale.

But...she needed more data.

And she knew the easiest way to go about getting it.

_Sherlock was gone for a few days- off…doing things he did when he wasn't prowling around her lab like Lord and Master. Lestrade was not around much either- that she couldn't be too bothered by; he had yelled at her for no reason other than he was mad at the world and Sherlock._

_Asshat. He should be so lucky she liked him._

_So when she backed into the lab one afternoon, scribbling information down on an autopsy packet, Sherlock was anchored behind his favored microscope with an assortment of petri dishes holding the grossest assemblage of decayed toes she'd ever seen. _

"_Ew, don't you leave those there when you leave!" She pointed for emphasis._

_He rolled his eyes. "You're embarrassing with your lack of clinical professionalism."_

"_Yeah, well you aren't exactly a textbook setup you butthead."_

"_Butthead." He parroted softly, probably despairing at her usage of such a low grade, low intelligence insult._

_She slowly set her work down on her desk, debating whether it worth bringing up or not. It was a tossup- she could bring attention to it, spook him, and have it never happen again, or she could ignore it, maybe not affect him at all, and it never happen again anyway because he couldn't be bothered to be so nice twice in a lifetime. _

_She was a firm believer of credit being given where credit was due…_

_Sucking a quick breath- because he was probably going to dissemble into a toddler the second he caught on and say something inherently douchy- Molly ambushed him._

_Sliding quickly into the stool next to him with enough force to bump it soundly into his, Molly ducked under his arm and wrapped both of hers around him in a ninja hug. He made a startled noise and of course tensed up a like ticking bomb but she just held on tighter._

"_I don't know what you did, but thank you." She told him, hugging him harder and inhaling the faintest scent of tobacco and something else that made Sherlock smell so damn good. _

_He of course was having mini melt down. "Oh, of the love of- you're molesting me! Why must you do that?"_

_She just nuzzled him harder, taking complete advantaged of his pathetic resistance as his hands were held above her because he didn't know the basics mechanics of a hug the boob._

"_Personal space! Boundaries! Quite touching me!" His baritone was reverberating in his chest and she took a moment longer to appreciate that lovely perk of him too._

"_No, you need a hug." She snickered._

"_NO! No! I do not need a hu- this is completely- would you stop that!"_

_She did laugh this time because he physically stopped himself from saying 'hug' and his voice almost reached new soprano heights in his panic to unfasten her from his person because of it._

"_Consider this both a thank you, and payback, Sherlock." She gave him one final good squeeze and tried not laughing over his dramatics because it. "You ruined my date, so I'm hugging you. But you tried fixing it, so I'm hugging you too, but for different reasons."_

_He looked like he was going to explode- but Molly noticed that all his protests were of the vocal variety. He never once tried pushing her off- which he could easily have done and she sort of expected him to do._

"_This is not a reward!" _

_No…it was a reward to herself because he kind of just outted himself as having meddled in her affairs. He could just deal with it. "Yes it is." She snuggled him and laughed as he squirmed like a cat desperate to get away. _

_Deciding she had tortured him enough, she pulled back and smirked in amusement at how scandalized he looked. _

"_You are such a girl." She told him. "You also need to read a book about proper hugging methods."_

"_I will do no such thing!" He sounded so serious about it, arms slowly lowering themselves as he leaned away from her less she attack him viciously like that again._

_Standing up, she tweaked his ear and moved back toward her desk, laughing as he flew in incensed hysterics behind her at the crime committed all over his person._

_How she adored that oddball…_

* * *

__For the record...I hate Joe. He doesn't listen.

Whatchu all think?


	8. Chapter 8

AN- Life has gone and kicked me so hard in the teeth this month- as it has many of you too. Sorry for the wait.

_Italics*** past stuff_

Mistakes...they are there. I made this chapter huge to compensate you for your time!

**How Lucky You Are**

By: Berouge

Fall rolled in that year with a bang. One moment it was pleasantly warm- summer having finally buggered off a bit- and London preened in the lovely weather, and the next day it was a torrential down poor that eased off into an almost constant drizzle.

That had been in late September, and by the middle of October, Molly was distinctly sick of it. She already had to replace her umbrella this year- the last one had been whipped from her hand by a strong gust of wind and killed under the wheels of a red double decker- and she only had the options of either a Pokémon sprinkled yellow or a cow print umbrella at the local hardware shop on the corner. London was synonymous with rain but this was pushing even her buttons- these feelings were heavily fostered by getting soaked three times by passing cabs because of unfortunate location ratio's to huge, dirty puddles, and a giant umbrella that strongly hinted of a cow fixation to anyone within a five block radius.

There was nothing worse than trundling into work in bog water saturated shoes and socks- oh, the socks…wet socks were harbingers of Satan- and dripping hair, because rain didn't hesitate to work with some serious breezes and blast her from under her cow umbrella's protective rim.

She had taken to stashing spare changes of scrubs all over her lab for just such incidents, because there was no way she was withstanding a cleansing frolic in one of the hospitals bio-hazard showers- which were frighteningly lacking in privacy in that there was no door and she was naked as could possibly be- and wiggling back into Long Lane steeped pants.

She also had a set of bra and panties locked tight in her bottom drawer of her desk- Sherlock picked it immediately, of course, because she had locked it, and his only reaction to her obvious indignation was questioning her about style choices.

_-"You obviously don't mind clashing colors and patterns." _

"_Sh-Sherlock! Get out of there!"_

"_Utterly succinct demonstration of your typical focus."_

"_Utterly classified information! And I like color!"_

"_You manage your socks in pairs- do you not feel the same need for these?"_

"_Not the same! Not the same! Shut that before Bernard see's and feels the need to lecture!"_

"_Why not make an effort?"_

"_This is not an appropriate conversation!"_

"_You have a complimentary partner that match-"_

"_How do you even know these thing?!"_

It was periphrastic question because she already knew how he came by such personal information as to what sort of underwear she liked to sport. She was also, strangely, not all that bothered by his awareness that she preferred cotton and color to silk or lace, because Sherlock just wasn't like other people.

Most guys would be immensely pleased with themselves if they knew exactly what sort of situation a girl was rocking under all her clothes. Why that was so fascinating, Molly couldn't really fathom with a sound enough argument to rationalize this mental process. Guys were visual creatures mostly, so she assumed it had something to do with that and attraction. It was rather anticlimactic in her opinion, as underwear wasn't really that interesting. She certainly didn't day dream about if Lestrade- who really was a handsome devil- favored boxers or briefs and what sort of material they were orchestrated from, or if Joe had certain days were he donned a lucky pair to help brace himself throughout the day. Then again, she was a good deal behind the notion that clothes added something- see, the Shirt for example- to a person rather than detracted. Exposed bras and panties fairly robbed from the mystery- plus she wore them all the time and bras, especially after a long work day, were uncomfortable and Lord help her if they didn't fit right. They just kept everything in place.

She figured it was a female thing to be largely desensitized to the power of lingerie.

Guys certainly never complained about the visual faux pas of bulging cups or public adjustments- they could go play in traffic if they did anyway, since they really had no idea what the female population had to put up with from Mother Nature and clothing manufacturers. Plus, guys did the crotch scratch in public and there was no coming back from that- a quick bra adjustment no way compared to that south of the border 'no no'.

Sherlock was less inclined to give a fig about what anyone had to deal with, but that didn't stop his line of questioning from pointing curiously toward her under garments locked- laughably, it appeared- in her desk drawer. Only her frantic panic at having Bernard overhearing this discussion kept her from actually answering his questions in more detail. Sherlock kind of blew past uncomfortable into a realm where propriety was slaughtered like a pig for the sake of satiating knowledge, and being probably the only woman he knew that wouldn't try to mace him for his intrusion, she was at the mercy of his considerable focus.

'Lucky' her…

"_You do realize," She stated slowly as he propped his feet up on her desk and paperwork, making himself at home. "That this conversation is beyond inappropriate, correct?"_

_He rolled his eyes. "Appropriateness is for the spectator. I'm after information, not your knickers."_

_Should she be insulted by that? Glaring at him, she tried not to growl. "What could you possibly want to know about a woman's delicates?" Haven't you ever seen them before? She suddenly squinted at him, as if the answer would be written in black sharpie on his forehead. He seemed the sort that could have easily swung either way- promiscuous for, knowing him, data, or disinterested completely because of the lack of concentration required. Chances seemed to lean heavily toward the latter, since she had known him for three years, and never once had she even garnered any inclination from him a desire to date. Tara was a cutie- much prettier then Molly, damn it- and she managed to snag attention from every male that walked past her or engaged in a conversation with the bombshell receptionist, and Sherlock probably wouldn't even have known she was sitting behind that desk every day if Tara didn't throw stuff at him. _

_Molly titled her head and tried to determine if that thought was supposed to make her feel better or worse._

"_Everything." _

_She waited in vain for what she hoped would be a follow up to his bizarre questioning. Something to help illuminate his weirdo train of thought. "A little…vague there, Confucius. You could find all of this out using that clever little thing called the internet, you know." _

"_I need real time data- not corrected references." He planted his palms together under his chin and waited, watching her with fathomless steel blue eyes. Ah, so he already had a good understanding and just wanted to see the human element at work. Maybe she should go get Tara and see how he faired when she unleashed the fashion kraken upon his person. Tara was the girl you took shopping for naughty lingerie in hopes of procuring the 'right' piece- in that she wanted to see every article modeled so as to compare contrast everything that came before or after. Modesty was for the fashionably blind._

_She should go get Tara. That'd teach Sherlock a thing or two about women- or how tenacious Tara could be. He'd probably have to go lie down in a dark room for a few hours to recover._

_Molly stared at him, thinking, and twitched in irritation as one haughty brow arched itself upward as if compelling her to stop her dawdling._

_What, did he expect her to whip her shirt off to show him? Now there was a thought. Shivering at her traitorous mind because she was almost positive he'd probably just sit in her seat with his expensive shoes still smudging all over her logs and records, and remain completely unmoved. Yet this was also the same man that would propel himself bodily through a wall if she were to try and hug him- he's such a girl- Molly decided to explain the obvious, unsure what exactly he was looking for. "Women wear bras for support. It's not rocket science." When he sighed, obviously burdened by her stupidity- what a jerk- Molly snatched at patience like it was a life line. "There really isn't more to it than that, Sherlock. Keeping everything in place required the invention of the brassiere and most women don't like having them show, so multiple versions have come about to solve that issue. Plus, no two women are the same and we all have different…er…requirements that need to be matched and met."_

"_Situations denote the proper selection, yes?" He pinched the bridge of his nose and she had the sudden urge to fling her notebook at him. Since when was Mr. Frigid an underwear gumshoe? Of the two of them, she was more likely to know what was up. He didn't need to lead in his questions like she was some dunce incapable of making the leap. _

_She just didn't want to expound on anything that hugs a breast into shape with him in earshot. She'd die from the overload of agitation and awkwardness. _

"_Obviously." She snipped, riled- because if she let her temper do the talking she could keep from stuttering like a prepubescent boy as they discussed things involving 'boobies'. "Depending on the function and what a person is wearing. I wouldn't wear a sports bra to a black tie event, just as I wouldn't flaunt a push-up at a gym- though some people have different ideas on that last one." An eyebrow spasm was all she received and she closed her eyes as she felt the heated flush of her face. Why the hell couldn't she talk about bras with a guy and not feel like a complete tit herself?_

_She was so embarrassing…_

"_What is the proper article?" Came the rapid fire question and she slowly opened her eyes to look at him. Seriously, Bing has these answers, and she wasn't obtuse enough to believe he hadn't already found accurate information somewhere out on the vast prairies of the interweb._

"_What, to a black tie soirée? Are you planning on going strapless or one shouldered?" She asked him seriously. "I also recommend red. It's so your color." _

_He scowled at her, not impressed with her teasing. "Your wit lacks charm. I'm working on a case and the suspect has at least two hundred such things in their wardrobe."_

_Two hundred bras? Holy cow, she was lucky if she had two clean ones lying about. "So? A girl can never have enough of them." She shrugged, alright with this information- it made sense to her in an absurd, overzealous sort of way. If she had the money, she wouldn't say no to two hundred bras- though she did wonder about where she could possibly store that many of them. Bras hogged a lot of room in the sock drawers. Watching him mutter discouraging things about her response, she thought on that number a little more._

_Nah, scratch that. There was no way she was hand washing- she always snickered at the silly suggestion on the care tag because who the hell had the time?- any number of bras with a greater numerical volume than zero._

"_It seems excessive. You only have six pairs-" She squeaked in dismay at this pronouncement. "Eight if counting the old ones crammed in the back of your drawer and my research has led me to believe this is above average for the typical female ages twenty-four to thirty-five." He said in his best 'thinking' voice as she struggled to get her lungs to swell open so she could breath._

_His research? What the..? Who the hell was he using as his test subjects aside from her? _

_What was he now, a panty sniffer too? _

"_Christ, Sherlock, do personal boundaries mean nothing to you?" She hissed, stressed at the thought of him knowing these intimate details about her. Not even Joe, her new boyfriend, knew these things. She thought he'd had gleaned this from trawling to find that bastard magazine at her mum's, but now…how did he know about her collection at home?_

_She could distinctly recall never inviting him over for tea and crumpets while flaunting the contents of her underwear drawer at him._

"_You took your shirt off while intoxicated." He stated bluntly,_ _absorbing her thought right out of thin air as his eyes stared up at the ceiling above him, blind to the chaos he just unleashed upon her. Sweet Merciful Jesus! She was never drinking to excess again! She yanked her shirt off- OFF- for Queen, Country, and Sherlock to see everything! Her mind must have short circuited from the surge of horror at her black out antics because she could barely form a thought in her head that wasn't a curse or the good Lord's name taken repeatedly in vain. "It required extracting something from that cluttered cache you call a closet." He added into the stale silence and rock bottom just kept getting lower and lower- not everyone has a meticulous system designed around a healthy and affluent wardrobe, gitwad! Somewhere in her crowded, ruptured brain that was leaking mortification and swear words all over her pride, she recalled belatedly that her closet was nowhere near her drawers..._

_And she was not forcing any more attention at that land mine because she accidently remembered what bra she had shimmied into that night…_

_Sherlock must have gotten quite the show._

"_Oh, my, God." She whined in a faint, fragile voice as she buried her head in her arms on the counter. "Oh, my, God…"_

"_Focus, Molly." Sherlock loudly snapped his fingers at her, indifferent to her drama- one of his many superpowers, which should have been punishable by law because it was so unfair. "Why would a woman who works at a fast food franchise need so many undergarments?" He stated the question as opposed to asking it, but Molly was too busy being thunderstruck at her sozzled audacity to dole out proper portions of attention to him. _

_That earned her a glare- she could feel the heat from it burning into the side of her head. _

_Oh, please let this be a day dream, please! That terrible evening, it just kept coming back like an enormous, gaudy, boomerang of bad decisions, bright lights, and vomit. _

"_One would logically assume a career prostitute or stripper but she came up clean." He pioneered on, thumb and fingers tapping out an agitated rhythm on his thigh as that huge race engine of a brain went to work deducing the intangible. She could sense the electricity in the air as he stripped the problem before him like she did to a banana. _

_Strip._

_She was an idiot._

_And then she felt the intensity of his gaze press into her again- what, was she supposed to have the answers to this pop quiz? As if she knew the reason behind a woman owning two hundred articles like some bra savant. This was just like him. He knows she wears bras- like every other woman in the city- and he immediately demands she contribute beyond a number to his private study of the quirks of a random woman suspect._

_She was spending far too much time with Sherlock if this was a mark of their familiarity with each other- he knew entirely too much about her. Joe would be livid if he discovered the pushy detective was doing this- Oh, God, he'd hit the roof if he found out about her skin parade!_

_And Sherlock was still waiting for her to produce gold reasoning from underwear…_

_Lord, help her._

"_Maybe she just really liked bras…" Molly whimpered from between her arms, too…humiliated to look at him. She may have to move to another country get over this self-induced trauma- and the fact she flashed Sherlock Bloody Holmes- he's lucky he didn't go blind._

_Groaning, Molly prayed for a swift and brutal end, something to make her forget ever sampling Tara's bomb of a drink._

_She stripped. Sherlock saw. _

_Oh…she wasn't going to be able to look him in the face anytime soon. And the knowledge that she had been so cavalier in front of him while plastered almost to the floor was just too much. No wonder he'd been so mad for all those days afterward- he had kept snarling about poor choices and idiotic consequences and all that time she thought he had been referring to her little display of mammalian regurgitation in the gutter. _

_He had no problem tossing the vomiting sequences back her face- he never once mentioned her gamboling around in her most revealing Victoria Secret push-up special that claimed to have the power to stop men in their tracks- and she wasted it on Sherlock while too inebriated to remember it- NOT THAT SHE WANTED TO!_

_She moaned pitifully again for good measure._

_He huffed at her- maybe ignorant to her internal discomfiture…maybe. Hopefully. "Work on your imagination!"_

_She was trying to get it to stop actually. She was demanding the image of her strip teasing for Sherlock to get out of her head and it wasn't working. "I dunno…she smuggled drugs in the cups or something?" His face crumpled into that annoying pinched expression he was so famous for and all but flung himself from her desk. _

"_Well if that's all the help you're going to be." He stomped from the lab, leaving her hunched form to continue to be worthless and shamed. _

_She was never drinking again._

This had been an unattainable goal however- she slew a whole bottle of wine the second she made it home. How else was a girl supposed to handle the news she had been…a little burlesque tramp during the hidden time of a black-out-drunk escaped? It was absolutely out of character for her!

And to bloody Sherlock Holmes! That man knew entirely too much about her now, and she _still _couldn't remember ever doing that!

Her harried call to her sister- who she could trust to never speak of it to another soul- hadn't been fruitful in guidance. Her questioning led more toward Sherlock making salacious moves on her while she was too out of it to remember- um…no, because no. He would probably curl up and cry in the corner before ever considering such a nightmarish…thing.

She had trusted him. Completely.

Unfortunately he could not exactly say the same thing. Poor guy, trying to get her safely home and she all but flashes him.

Molly remembered doing the math, and how many months exactly had gone by since that night, and consequent morning- he was still around, being his prickly self. He hadn't seemed bothered- not that he outwardly would, as Sherlock Holmes didn't tick to any particular rhythm known to mankind, let alone a sloshed gal pal in a two story pushup bra she could balance a glass of water on like a portable table.

He'd practically seen everything- Joe would probably descend into madness if he knew about that incident. He had been remarkably…tolerant since their reconciliation in the lab, but he was suspicious of Sherlock like no one's business, which was a big waste of time and, Molly felt, a little discourteous. She wasn't a cheater and Sherlock was only her idiot best friend. Not to mention the huge fact that Sherlock was not interested like that- he just didn't want to share her time and even Wade had taken to nudging Joe off the consulting detective's antics. If the guy could remain unmoved- even being scarred internally- after a date with her horrendous inelegance, Joe had very little to worry about from Sherlock aside from being experimented on himself- because she could not always predict when Sherlock was up to something. Tara now refused anything the six foot brat offered or recently touched after finding out he was testing subconscious awareness levels. Level five bio-hazards had been involved and that's when she stopped listening because if she knew more she would probably resign her position at St. Bart's out of guilty conscience alone. Sometimes it was safer- and less infuriating- not to question what sort of things the mad genius had brewing. She just tried to stop them from happening before Sherlock succeed in his scheming- she was getting better.

They ran the numbers once and Sherlock solemnly determined she had a fifteen percent success rate.

She was impressed. She would have been awestruck with two percent, because Sherlock was super tricky and near impossible to pin down a where and when with him. Kinda like hunting tornadoes…you might not like what you find once you get there.

That didn't mean Joe didn't push the issue of Sherlock's 'pranks'- Molly had never seen Sherlock so insulted by this description of his 'highly detailed and beautifully setup experiments'. If anything, it just drew Sherlock's cross hairs down on Joe even more- like fresh meat in a tiger cage. Luck would have it, outside one or two incidents at first, when Joe first started coming physically down to the lab, Sherlock had blessedly been absent- out terrorizing the denizens of London with his abominable behavior- and Joe had been his usual cheerful, funny self as they, plus Tara and Wade, lunched together.

It was enjoyable and relaxingly casual.

Then Sherlock, sensing the vibrations of discord in his web, came barreling back into the lab on some tangent during one of Joe's visits a few weeks later- barely paused as he inserted himself bodily between Molly and Joe, effectively killing whatever conversation they had been having and dragging her attention back into the morgue so he could flutter around the body of a homeless person.

It was really annoying because she just didn't get to see Joe as much as she would have liked and Sherlock knew that- she whined about it often enough. And it wasn't like she was picking sides on purpose- while at work, no matter who came to call, her job took precedence and Sherlock had, over the years, become another tick mark on her list of things she had to watch closely- behind body examinations, bit prep, and spelling and grammar errors in her paperwork- or else he'd break the rules he rarely remembered existed.

If Sherlock was in the morgue proper, she needed to be there too and she had a sneaky suspicion the six foot man-child knew this and took express advantage if just to make Joe go away- she couldn't prove it because Sherlock always had a sound reason as to why he couldn't wait and Lestrade always backed his excuses- jerks, the both of them- so what was she to do?

At the time, she felt she could handle it and keep Joe from getting his feelings hurt.

Matters weren't helped along any by Sherlock revealing she had no scruples about tugging her shirt off while hammered- she could NOT believe she did that but why would he lie? HE had nothing to gain other than her skittishness and avoidance, which he wouldn't allow. Plus she could remember wearing something other than that sparkly top she had donned for the club the next morning as she weakly peeled her clothes off to duck under the shower that Sherlock so adamantly insisted she immediately take, because even he drew a line at hair dipped in pools of sick.

He was just so lovely to be around while struggling to survive a hangover.

For the next few days after he yanked the rug right out from her under her feet regarding propriety, she had a blessedly brief and much needed respite from her favorite jerk as he had been out handling the Bra Accumulator case- that had at first, looked to be a just a crazy instance of selective hoarding, and Sherlock fairly rioted in the streets at the idiocy of it all, until he found a list shoved into the space designed for bra padding- what he was doing with that bra to even find it was a mystery- which blew the lid off a colossal and massively horrifying child prostitute ring. Talk about souring surprises…The bras were for when the kids started needing them and it spoke volumes on the deplorable operation and its God awful success by the amount of bras being shipped out each month to the various holding sights around London- sodding _Union Underground_ that disgusting place!-, England, and extensive tracts of Italy.

Who would have thought a pile of brassieres found in a seemingly average woman's house would lead to such a foul discovery behind the curtain? It made her sick to think about it.

Sherlock couldn't even gloat- he had been bothered by the small girl back in the alleyway and still to this day she was unclear how she had been able to tell. He didn't act any different- still rude and blisteringly blunt, but there was something off about him once they returned to the lab and it had nothing to do with their little emoting episode between the trucks- that he swore he deleted. It was in the way he held himself and hovered behind her next to Lestrade as she worked, but at the time she had bigger things to contend with in the shape of a scrawny, seventy pound dead child on her table- Sherlock, and his numerous ticks, was shoved way down the list of things she needed to be concerned over. She could remember finishing the post mortem and tabulating the blood tests and consequently getting sick in the bog as the results pointed repeatedly toward sexual assault- she had been seven flipping years old!

It was horrifying.

All in all, it had been a terrible evening that left a stain that nobody knew exactly how to get out. And its presence persisted long after the media interest waned and the cops moved on to other areas that needed their attention more than a soul that could no longer offer up secrets.

This case had evil in the veins and it was like a damn rash the way it spread.

But life had continued on and the circumstances, while deeply troubling, were left without conclusive evidence to wrap up the loose ends even though Sherlock was let off his lead to blaze fire into every nook and cranny so no stone, or scumbag was left unturned. As hard as it was to sometimes believe, even Sherlock Holmes needed starter and connector points to flesh out the whole picture and at the time there had been nothing to go on once the clues ran out the tips failed to hold up.

He had ran himself ragged looking too.

She had watched as he kept repeatedly going back to the cold case file even after the child's body was long gone to the crematorium and entombed at one of the local churches- Molly had made it a point to go to the humble little service that only she, the priest, and the alter server aiding him were the only witnesses to- it bothered her that a life could be so accurately weighed in how many people actually cared once it ended.

A dead child deserved more than a small gaggle of strangers to see them off for the last time.

Sherlock cared though. It wasn't anything major or outwardly emotional, but she'd caught him with the thin manila folder at least three times and never said anything because he wasn't one to…dwell like that.

Cases either unfolded, or required some serious thought marathons, but he never circled over the same one like he had for the little girl to the point that it was driving him to distraction weeks and months after the fact. This odd display of self-withdrawal inward…she would see again and boy howdy was it a kick in the teeth the second time around, but for completely selfish reasons.

Still, it was so unusual to see this show the first time because Sherlock didn't really like kids- surprise, surprise- and he wasn't one to pull his punches just because someone was barely in kindergarten, but he fairly boiled over this little girl's involvement when the first suspect was caught so many weeks after the baby girl was discovered covered in muck and bed sores. Lestrade had told her in a quiet, wary voice that Sherlock hadn't reacted well.

At all.

"_He normally doesn't take cases involving children." Lestrade's low voice hummed next to her as she used a sharp pair of shears to cut through denim to expose the legs of yet another expired gang member. Tattoo recognition was still the easiest form of identification for these idiots and if she ever fell to a life of brutal crime, she would leave the ink off, if just to make her dead carcass harder to identify for the pathologist or coroner in charge. "His excuse being they are too dull and pointless."_

_Molly scrunched her face as she looked up at her dear DI. "He's such a compassionate man." _

_Lestrade's lips barely quirked, but his eyes remained distant and closed off. "Sherlock doesn't handle them well." He revealed and Molly froze. "At least…that's what I've come to assume is the reason."_

"_Explain 'doesn't handle them well' in more detail." She asked quickly, shooting a concerned look into the lab where the man in question was planted behind his beloved microscope- he'd been there since before she strolled in that morning and didn't even grunt when she greeted him. She had just presumed him to be in a strop- he tended to have those from time to time and since getting high in a dirty alleyway somewhere wasn't a viable option anymore and she would castrate him if she found out otherwise- he had taken recently to breaking into the lab, which if she had to pick a vice for him, being a nerd was at the top of her list. If she craned her neck and leaned a little to the left, she could see that he had at least eaten the bacon and egg croissan'wich she had tucked in at his elbow earlier that morning upon discovering his encampment. He tended to skip eating when put off to humanity._

_Her care sometimes worked and sometimes it didn't, but he wouldn't be able to contract scurvy anytime soon on her watch. Hooray for small victory's…_

"_He's meaner." Lestrade said simply. "More aggressive. His temper shortens to barely a nub- he's not pleasant." If the context of the conversation wasn't so grim and troubling, she would have pointed out that he was usually a big grumpy fun suck. But Lestrade knew this, and because of his understanding of how Sherlock was day to day, his observation held water. "Sherlock's morals plod along the same path as many of the prisoners over at the penitentiary and down at county do- he tolerates all sorts of crime between adults because that's business between them, but touch a child and all bets are off."_

_Oddly sentimental…sorta._

_Since when did he give a rat's rear about Tiny Tim and all his problems in life? He wasn't actively horrible to kids- okay sometimes he was but he was practically a toddler himself so she had to leave wiggle room- but he wasn't one to sugar coat anything for the sake of 'virgin ears'. Parents wisely tended to avoid him, which is how he liked it._

_She dropped her eyes to the giant dead man on her table. "What happened? I saw him thumbing at the file on that child you found in the back alley, but I never asked him about it. He's not been approachable on the matter." She was smart enough to read the signs, and pressing him was always dangerous when he darkened like that- she learned a few good lessons their first year together after all. Sherlock was prone to chatter to himself, or Aloysius, about cases but if he fell silent and ramped up the intensity, it never did bode well._

"_He linked several old cases together, but the child sex trafficking ring was not one anyone- including him- was prepared to find. We had known there was a depot for the black market at one of the clubs but… " Lestrade's voice hitched a little. "Sherlock landed badly on this one."_

_She stared at him, shears limp in her grasp as she tried to understand what Lestrade meant without having to ask- she was always bad at this word play double meaning thing. "Landed badly how?" She gave up._

"_He walked in on a man taking advantage of the little girl and boy in the room. Sherlock tossed him over the railing in the fourth floor stairwell." The DI explained softly, eyes troubled. "It wasn't…Sherlock was skimming for information and while barging into this was a shocker, those kids could have suffered a lot longer without his inhuman timing bringing him to the door."_

_Molly's gloved hands were clasped to her mouth, eyes bulging in horror, as her mind twisted to a stop over the bleak atrocity that some people were able to commit without even a seconds thought. Those poor babies…_

_Oh, Sherlock…_

"_He didn't tell you?" Lestrade asked, frowning at her._

_He never said a word._

At the conclusion of the case, as the high profile arrests began to roll in and the media started to salivate at the sickening details coming to light- this case right here should have made his name a house hold phenomenon- he turned recluse, all but vanishing from New Scotland Yard and the MET for almost three weeks- Lestrade had taken to calling her for a change to see where he was because he wasn't answering or responding his phone calls or texts.

He wasn't going to take the stand- whether it was his own refusal or not, she never bothered to sleuth it out. If he wanted to tell her would, but she wasn't holding her breath.

He still came to the lab, but he was silent for days.

Suddenly, in the face of his…grieving? Sulking? Disengagement? She wasn't sure, but her problems seemed shallow and superficial stacked against the travesty that he had witnessed firsthand.

He was acting as if he had failed on this case instead of the humungous success it was in reality. By past experience alone, he should be so high on himself, the laws of physics ought to be laboring to keep his feet solidly on terra firma. She didn't feel that pressuring him to talk would solve anything- it rarely ever did and was a tactic that needed to be used sparingly- and hovering always went down like a lead balloon. So Molly fell back on old habits of coddling him with level five bio-hazards, copious amounts of either tea or coffee prepared how he liked- something she hadn't even remembered learning at any specific point in knowing him- and giving him plenty of space to be by himself yet not alone as she was never very far away from him. Her stereo softly played in the background of the lab and she kept her date schedule scrupulously clear- something that was easy to do as Joe was tacked back up in Manchester without hope of fleeing down to London for some time yet. She even eased off the phone chats with Joe during her lunches- this was difficult but Sherlock appeared a little more at ease because of it and she was trying to make him feel better, so she didn't complain about the sacrifice. But even if Joe had been here in London, Molly would have felt reluctant to leave Sherlock to his own devices. If he was in her lab, he wasn't out doing stupid things she knew nothing about.

Joe had dozens of friends to keep him afloat or boost him back up. Sherlock did not. She was not picking sides.

She refused to feel guilty just because her boyfriend and best friend actively disliked each other.

So as long as he needed her, she was there- not that he would ever say anything. Feelings, for him, were like drops of holy water to a vampire- he flinched and hissed all the same when threatened with them. But it was Sherlock. His callousness just meant he wasn't having delusions that might mean a late onset of schizophrenia.

Seeing Sherlock out of sorts was wrong like an itch that couldn't be scratched, and apparently, their little pseudo lab family reacted in ways that both surprised, and warmed Molly in Sherlock's stead- because he was an ass and wouldn't know how to respond graciously, God love him. Bernard was mildly disturbed over watching the six foot egomaniac lethargically go about his business, going so far as to set a diseased limb extracted from London General- they couldn't use it as the embalmer had bungled his one job and it was technically useless to science now- down in front of him just to see if Sherlock would take the bait. He did of course but it took a lot longer than made either of them truly comfortable. Even Tara had been bothered by his lack of reaction, and as far as Molly knew, she and Sherlock clawed at each other like the Earth's very rotation depended on the other getting in the last word.

He would shake himself out eventually. Molly had every confidence in him to come back around- it was just that this case was so nauseating and ghastly that she could not blame him for pulling inward so as to distance himself to regroup…or at least that's what she thought he was doing- but even he had his moments and she wasn't about to press him back into shape unless he showed the desire first.

So when he whined at her, some week and half after the case first went to court, because she had dared to turn on the new episode of _Jersey Shore_ with a bag of Kitkats snuggly situated in her lap, she hid her smile of relief- he was on his way back. He had been quiet too long.

She had missed his bellyaching over the 'tenaciously irritating' stuff she did.

She was quoting him on that.

And her stuff wasn't irritating.

"_Must you? It's distressing enough knowing such programing is palatable by today's youth." The sound of his baritone after so many days of sullen silence was like a gift and she had to resist her reaction to hearing him speak- let alone complain- as making a big deal of it would have consequences. If Sherlock had the desire to verbally mug everyone with his lamenting the perceived wrongs in his world- and that which were many- he was going to be just fine, and her making it into something big would probably drive him into lodging himself up a vent somewhere in the future as opposed to brooding around her lab where she could make sure he didn't die of dehydration._

"_Come watch it with me. Tara said there was some serious drama on this episode." She suggested without the hope of him actually following through with it- he'd probably cut his own arm off using nothing but a rusty spoon that had been soaking in sewage for thirty years to get out of the mindless drivel that was Molly's beloved reality television. _

_Melodramatic baby._

_He muttered something under his breath that distinctly sounded like 'stupid girls'. _

_How she missed him._

_She snorted. The truth hurt._

"_Want a Kitkat?" She offered generously, rigidly maintaining a straight face. It was like a never ending series of pet peeves she was handing him- things he liked to grumble about; she had a whole list of them somewhere…_

"_No." He stated forcefully and she felt herself cracking. He was so easy sometimes, he had no idea._

"_You sure? I don't think you've ever really given them a chance." She muttered as she noisily crinkled a wrapper and sank her teeth into the chocolate coated wafers in pure bliss. Rolling her eyes expressively at him to demonstrate how wonderful her candy haze was at that exact moment, Molly had to swallow the moan that threatened to slip out. _

_What were a few extra stones in comparison to this flash of Heaven?_

_His scowl was so familiar and typical, the corners of her mouth started to spasm upward into a smile._

"_Absolutely positive. They are beyond unappetizing." He educated her on what must have been the ten thousandth time and she viciously quelled a happy giggle at having this old debate. _

_She dug a hand into her Kitkat bag, taking care to make as much noise a possible, "Ah, well, we can't have that." And extracted a king sized Whatchamacallit- if there was a sweet that Sherlock had a weakness for, it was these things, and by weakness, she meant she had eyeballed him in silent disbelief as he ate them without hesitation or preemptive bitching- and hefted it in her palm before gently tossing it so as to scoot onto the counter so the bar would slide and not break. She watched as the sweet skated over the smooth surface before ricocheting shortly off of his microscope to a stop. He stared down at the bright wrapper blankly for several seconds and she specifically turned back around to the telly to catch as the big dumb 'guido' dating the annoying chick with the pretty legs gave a testament to how he was 'disrespected' by his ex-girlfriend in a dirty club. _

_It really was appalling, this show- she loved it!_

_And she loved the sound of a sweet wrapper being torn into behind her even more._

Sherlock seemed to stick close the lab as October bled into November- as in he was there almost every day- he was experimenting hardcore like a mad scientist on goop. At least that's what it looked like to her untrained eye, but when she asked what he was doing with the sludgy stuff, he got all offended and prissy.

As if she were supposed to intuitively know what sort of toxic waste he lovingly had baking in St. Bart's petri dishes and the exact purpose it was to be applied in everyday social situations.

Knowing her batty consulting detective, it was highly explosive, corrosive, or fermented from puppy hearts for no other reason than he _could_. Sherlock liked things to have a definitive explanation in life, but he wasn't beyond bending his own rules for the sake of 'why not' and 'because I can'.

Bernard was less than pleased with the amount of idiocy in his lab- this view was not helped along any by Sherlock's determination to test erosion rates on bone with any and all caustic substances he could get his hands on because he was apparently bored and immune to olfactory discomfort- so the senior pathologist had accepted an offer up at the University of Glasgow to go and spend time with a group of enlightened individuals not yet tarnished by offbeat people like Sherlock Holmes.

Molly felt like he may have been pointing fingers- not that she blamed him. He was also horribly cruel to leave her to work the morgue and all the responsibilities that came with it by her lonesome.

It sucked being a one pony show for the Yard to heckle when London's seedy underbelly acted up, as there were a hundred things to do and places to be and there was only one of her to do them and go there. Dimmock was especially belligerent and had called on three separate occasions in a two day span to scream the earwax into submission as he waited for the results of a toxicology report.

In his defense, they rarely took so long once Bart's decided to do them- Dimmock was a jerk, so the universe took that into some serious consideration.

"_Did…did he just call me a…puling quim?" Molly turned surprised eyes to Tara, unsure about what just happened as she tapped a finger down on the 'off' button of the loud speaker._

_The perky receptionist shrugged. "I have no clue what he just called you." She moved to slide yet another packet onto her desk- for a new body that just arrived via the boys in blue. "What's a quim?"_

_She had no idea. _

_Her vocabulary had grown, thanks in part to hanging around Sherlock, who sometimes appeared to have working knowledge of every word in the English language- or just plain ate dictionaries for three square meals a day- new and old, and Lestrade, who had colored things up carefully with his own brand of dialect from the street. _

_But the word quim had never breeched her etymological shores._

"_Whatever it was, you should be offended." Tara decided for her. "Dimmock is a right pig sometimes. Greg says he's just tetchy because his son has decided to come out publicly."_

_Molly slowly moved to pull the new file toward her, already sensing a headache in the works. "I thought his son had been out for weeks." Thanks to Sherlock and his verbal diarrhea. _

"_Not publically. Sherlock just got the ball rolling. Maybe we'll get lucky and Dimmock will check himself out with a suddenly rediscovered familial history of bad hearts."_

Molly hadn't bothered to look the word up- wasn't worth the effort to click out of her log folders or Amazon cart loaded with DVDs to find out what Dimmock had meant. So when he called again later that same week- for the fourth time- Molly opted to shunt the pest to her desk's voicemail- Tara was all too happy to assist in ruining someone else's day. He had called her that word again, however, when she had finally bothered to remember to check the blasted thing.

Twice was too much. If Dimmock was using it, then she probably should know what he was bawling down the line at her so she could discern how offended she was supposed to pretend to be.

Luckily for her, Sherlock was around and since he knew every word that had ever been invented, she took the opportunity to educate herself the easy way by questioning him.

"_What's a quim?" She asked suddenly into the comfortable quiet of the lab- one of the rare days she had neglected to turn on her radio, so things were more muted than normal. Sherlock didn't even bat an eye; just followed her lead when she decided she needed the audio comfort or not- not that he would ever complain about the absence of noise- he loathed _The Backstreet Boys_._

_It was rather upsetting if she were completely honest. _

_Sherlock was disassembling a dirty t-shirt- that he had 'acquired' from a crime scene- to check fiber content and blood ID and what the poor bastard probably ate for breakfast, when he looked up at her question. "I beg your pardon?" He seemed perplexed._

_Well that was a new reaction. "What's a quim?"_

"_Use it in a sentence." He directed after a short but loaded pause, steel blue eyes flashing while rapping the shears in his hand smartly off the countertop. _

"_You're wasting my time you puling quim." She rehearsed Dimmock's parting message earlier in the week and watched as Sherlock's lips twisted in distaste. _

_Well this should be illuminating…_

"_A quim, in this instance, is a slang reference for the female genitalia." He went back to what he was doing as she went about keeping herself from dying of embarrassment- again! She should have just Googled it! That figures! Well, at least it was more interesting than the c-word, which was boringly common even though it had the power to make her mouth feel dirty. "Who called you this?"_

_She was twitching. "Oh, Dimmock. So I take it puling is…what, puking or something?" Now there was a picture…_

_He gave her a weird look, his pale eyes unreadable. "Your inadequate education is truly appalling."_

_Oh, wow, thanks…"Be nice." You jerk. _

"_Puling means to whine or whimper." He told her absently as he turned back to his illegally obtained focus piece. "Dimmock is an idiot, but he does strike gold on occasion."_

_Oh? "Excuse me?" Was Sherlock not so subtly implying something here?_

"_He's practically lethargic with stupidity. That being said, he has been known to smith some unique imagery when pushed." He rattled off and Molly scowled at him._

_Sherlock's loyalty needed to renegotiate its contract with his brain._

The work load was starting to affect her personal life too. She had to cancel two dates with Joe already- which really blew dogs for quarters because he had been so tied up as of late back home, that he hadn't had the chance to come to London, and it wasn't like she could go up there and visit him. He had been totally understanding and supportive, but it still was a major bummer to go home, night after night, without any future plans to look forward too. Work was consuming so much of her time that days off were beginning to go the way of the dinosaurs. She technically had two days free a week- and they could be any day she wanted because, well, it was her lab when Bernard was away and she knew what needed to be done when and so on. Usually, she kept her down time to the odd week days- because NSY was less likely to drop a body on a Tuesday instead of a rolling Friday night when the pubs and clubs pulsed like the heartbeat of the city, but in her line of work, she had to be just as flexible as the unexpected. Lady Misfortune waited for no one after all.

Or that's what she told herself, because it sounded a lot more interesting than saying she had a sporadic workload that made her guzzle the cappuccino machine dry in the employee lounge.

It was getting to the point where she was thinking about begging a favor from Sherlock in exchange for bits if he could maybe help her out with blood and tissue slides. Prepping and making them took an extraordinary amount of time and he not only knew how to do them, but he could do them right the first time- it rankled, but sometimes it took her a few goes to get the right angle on a cut or a clear enough sample to be worth anything.

She had been desperate.

As the days yawned into weeks- another two aborted dates out of six promising ones, damn it, wasted potential!- Molly was at her wits end. They needed to get another body down in the lab and morgue to help her- preferably someone who wouldn't rat on her about Sherlock to the board- she had better things to do than pathetically attempt to ride herd on the big genius- so that left eager to please interns, which translated into more of a hassle until they were trained up.

And there was Sherlock to worry about- he'd eat them.

She'd rather shoot herself than deal with a greenhorn and Sherlock together. So she slogged the uphill battle by herself and tried to keep in mind that she loved her job.

She loved her job.

She loved her job- she was starting to hate her job, er…more specifically the burden. At least while she spent her days frantically smashing as much into them as possible so she didn't have to stay overly late.

She was still hesitant to work the graveyard shift by herself- it would be a year in the spring and the ache of doubt had yet to diminish, it was frustrating- and thus far she had managed to avoid it by Sherlock showing an act of goodwill and friendship and snag the chance to experiment undaunted for hours- so she had taken to cramming as much as possible into the day shift- which translated painfully into no telly lunch breaks or communal meals with Wade and Tara. Scarfing whatever she could at her desk while eyeballing her spelling or doing the logs had become a critical time saving mechanism in her day.

She was also tired.

Things never did bode well when she was too wrecked to keep her wits about her.

_She didn't remember dozing off. _

_She did, barely, recall being rudely jostled awake, however._

"_Wake up!" A basso voice she knew too well snarled overhead. "Wake up, you foolish girl."_

_Ugh, go away and leave her to die._

_Molly just groaned, rolling her head to the other side and snuggled down into her arm, ignoring the finger jabbing sharply into her shoulder. _

_Holy Christ, could he be more of an annoying prat!? "G'way…" She garbled drunkenly at him. "'way with you."_

"_Up! Get up, Hooper!" A hand snaked around her bicep and tugged her elbow out, dropping her head onto her desk like a bloody stone. _

"_Ow! What-" She jerked her hand up to her rub at her brow bone, glaring groggily at her tormentor. "What's the big deal?" She rasped at him, too wrung out to bother acknowledging the small, nervous flutter in her gut at his looming over her like a thug._

_An apt description if there ever was one._

"_Are you completely void of all common sense?" Sherlock hissed at her, steel blue eyes glittering in his temper. "Get up!"_

_She was too exhausted for this. "Be nice." She told him in a worn voice._

"_No! You obviously have no concept of self-preservation. It's ten at night and you are asleep at your desk as if you can afford such a luxury."_

_Molly blinked owlishly at him. "I didn't plan to fall asleep. Why are you here?!" He hadn't been around in some five days and she wasn't sure what he was doing since he'd still been avoiding any and all cases Lestrade had attempted to pull him in on. It was strange behavior and she was highly suspicious because of it. Glaring, she let her eyes slide past his shoulder to check the time anyway because she had at least three - Holy! It was ten o'clock! Where had the day gone?_

_Well…crap! The last time gap she could recall was…_

_Oh, crud._

_She'd been asleep for five hours at her desk at work. _

_That wasn't good. That would also explain the stiffness in her shoulders and neck._

"_Yes. I see you're finally catching up with your situation." Her six foot pain-in-the-ass said snidely, having seen the dawning realization in her eyes no doubt. "Tell me, do you enjoy knowing people can sulk around your unconscious body without you so much as twitching with awareness?"_

_Oooo, that was below the sodding belt- even if it was partly true, and she would rather lick the morgue drain than tell him that. She rubbed roughly at her eyes, trying to shake the haze of sleep from her brain so she could rally enough of a comeback to punt his attitude back down his throat, but as the response gap widened beyond 'witty' into the ever charming 'awkward' stage, she just let her poorly assembled indignation go. Dealing with Sherlock Bloody Holmes for three years had taught her how to gracefully accept defeat._

_He sucked because of it. _

_Not answering his question- because it would piss him off some, even if she couldn't smartly sucker punch him like he did to her- Molly rolled her shoulders stiffly back into her chair. "Why are you here?" She asked just as he was planning on saying something that probably hinted strongly of douchebag. _

"_Case." He narrowed his eyes at her. "Get up."_

_What the hell? "Get out?" She suggested courteously._

_He was not a happy camper- too bad! Welcome to Molly Hooper's Paradise of Suckage, tosser! "Knock it off! Lestrade brought a body in but you have surpassed your usefulness for the day so you might as well go home." Ugh. _

_Git. _

_Wait._

"_Another one?" Her shoulders slumped at the news- she could easily ignore the rest of the junk spilling out of his mouth at this abysmal news. "This is the fifth one in four days! What are the cops doing with their time?!"_

"_Not sleeping on the job, if you're wondering." A new voice opined from the morgue doors and Molly had the distinct displeasure of being ganged up on as Anderson made his thoughts known. "Nice face, Hooper. The drool really adds to your feminine lure."_

_Her hand flew the cheek that had been planted on her desk, and then fought the strong desire to kill as the slimy Serious Crimes forensic investigator snickered at her. Shoving back from her seat- she desperately tried to ignore the large wet spot on a stack of transport slips- Molly shouldered her way past a silent Sherlock. It was childish to be angry that he hadn't bothered to help defend her from Anderson's stupid antics. It was childish._

_But she was still irked about it anyway._

_Gits. _

_She resisted rolling her eyes at her second least favorite member of Lestrade's entourage, and had to swallow a wild curse at seeing the other half of team Dynamic Dumbass stationed next to one of her examination tables with Lestrade and two other uniformed cops. Did nobody listen to her when she proclaimed Anderson and Donovan were barred from her morgue without prior notification?_

_Lestrade frowned when his eyes slanted to her. Donovan was just starting to lean into a smirk._

_Cow. _

"_Don't start." She cut him off as he opened his mouth after giving her a once over, less he also point out what had already been brought to her attention. She couldn't possibly be the only person in this room to ever doze off at work. "What do you have for me?"_

_He pursed his lips. "You don't look good, Molly." _

"_Thank you." She told him dryly. No respect… _

"_No, not like that-"_

"_You look like you've been ridden hard and put away wet." Donovan slipped in smoothly, cutting Lestrade off and Molly gnashed her teeth, infuriated. "Boyfriend troubles?"_

"_That's enough, Donovan." Lestrade stated sharply, glaring at his DS. Molly stared too, stung that she wasn't quick enough to efficiently put stinking Donovan in her place. Or Sherlock in his for that matter._

_It just wasn't her night. "Right," She sighed after a time, firmly ignoring Sherlock, who just appeared at Lestrade's side as if by magic. "What do you have here?" It took a lot more strength than it should have to let Donovan's comment go, to not even respond to them because despite Molly's best efforts, she was petty in that she wanted to kick the smart mouthed woman out the door. Verbally or physically…she wasn't fussy._

_Shame Donovan could probably twist her into a pretzel before Molly could think to blink. Throwing punches wasn't really a wise fall back plan for Molly, but in a battle of wits, the odds were forever in her favor._

_At least in this instance, if not today._

_The guys- Sherlock, Anderson, and she threw Lestrade into that lot as well- said awful things all the time, but theirs was always a certain level of idiocy that she labeled as distinctly male and therefore, could be ignored, or simply shunted aside. They were stupid- even Sherlock, not surprisingly- so the garbage they whipped out wasn't typically worth the energy to react too. _

_But having another woman take up a part of their moron mantel was equitable to declaring cold war. _

_A woman could field strip another woman in seconds- hair color from a bottle, cheap taste in make-up, a real bitch with no real reason- it wasn't hard. An unfriendly that knew secrets was a lot more dangerous than one flying blind- cough, men- so Molly had to stamp down on the urge to bristle and hiss._

_She would not confirm her blood in the water. _

_Lestrade was reluctant to pull Molly in because she apparently looked that haggard- God, shut the hell up, Sherlock!- but he didn't really have a choice. There was no one else to professionally handle the body at the moment, so they were all stuck._

_It was while she was jotting down the basic facts on a new report forum- height, weight, physical description, obvious scars, tattoos, the usual- or at least she was trying too. She was coming to the slow realization that she might be at the end of her tether in terms of usefulness. Her hand was shaking and it took a lot longer than normal to get her eyes to focus on the stuff she needed to. Sherlock was flitting around the table like a neurotic bird, robbing the body of its secrets, and still managing to leave ample amounts of attention to insulting everyone in the room. Donovan and Anderson were tag teaming to try and guarantee that the assembly at large went home with a headache as they endeavored at bringing Sherlock down a few pegs- why bother? He produced them upon command. Lestrade struggled to retain professionalism amongst his idiot posse and the two uniformed lackey's wisely kept their mouths shut less they draw attention to themselves. _

_The smartest of the group really…_

_When she had to stare at the word 'Caucasian' for almost thirty seconds because it just didn't look right, Molly had to let go of her pride and accept that she was no longer able to conduct her job at the level of efficiency that St. Bart's demanded._

_Lestrade must have been watching her because the second she dropped her clipboard from her face in tired resignation, he pushed off from one of the tub sinks he had been leaning against while his team and Sherlock squabbled over the dead guy. He slunk up to her side as Anderson said something very rude that made Sherlock snort. "A word?" He asked softly and she nodded, relieved to get away from the arguing. _

_He led her out into the hallway instead of back into the lab, and the sudden decrease in noise was a relief. Sighing, she followed Lestrade a little further down the hall to one of the benches used by visitors and families and Molly didn't even put up a protest about not being able to see Sherlock- it was a rule to not leave him unsupervised in the morgue, but there were four other people with him. They just may be able to keep him from nicking anything._

_She wasn't going to hold her breath. _

"_What's going on?" Lestrade turned to look at her and she had to actively kick her brain into gear to follow what he was asking._

"_I don't know, you brought me out here." She shuffled the last couple feet to a bench and dropped heavily down onto it as if her legs could no longer hold her own weight._

"_You're exhausted." He stated, leaning a hip against her seat's armrest. _

"_There's work to be done." She shrugged. What did he want her to say? Lestrade frowned, mind grating over a perceived problem and she shoved a palm into an over dry eye. "This operation of mine is run by two people- one who is currently lecturing up in Scotland and the other is seated right before you. I have three precincts dumping their business into my 'office'. What do you expect?" There were days she was amazed the whole circus hadn't imploded in on itself._

"_You need to ease off or you'll make yourself sick." He told her gently._

_Molly drooped. "Man, do I look that bad?" _

"_You look like…you're struggling." He said delicately. "Not a short work spree, either. You've been grinding the stone for weeks at a pace that's too much for one person alone. I know, I'm a cop." When she blinked, her eyelids were out of sync and Lestrade just sighed. "You need to go home."_

"_And who will do the autopsy? There isn't anyone at this facility that can stomach this sort of work." And importing one from a neighboring hospital was really difficult to do. Most medical institutions did not like sharing their specialized employees with the competition- even if no hospital in their right sodding mind wanted to be the City Morgue. It was because of this reason that she was dealing with right now._

_Too much work and not enough people to do it. _

_Lestrade shook his head. "That's okay. There doesn't need to be an autopsy really. Sherlock had this thing solved at the crime scene."_

_Her head was swimming and she leaned forward to brace her elbows against her knees so she could pinch the bridge of her nose. For some obvious reason, hearing him tell her this really didn't sit well. "Th- then why are you- I already have so much to do-"_

"_Sherlock was concerned." He cut her off with an unrepentant shrug, not even allowing her irritation to gain traction. "He all but ripped the mystery apart before my eyes and was seconds from telling me what I should look for in whom, when Anderson mentioned getting a toxicology done." He rolled his eyes at the last bit- apparently even he questioned Anderson's 'contributions' from time to time. "It was like a system shut down and Sherlock ended up agreeing with him. With Anderson." The incredulity in Lestrade's voice was amusing, even if she could wholly sympathize. They would probably never have believed such an event could occur without him having attested to witnessing it. _

_The planets must have aligned, allowing pigs the power of flight and Sherlock to sacrifice pride. Well it was a once in a lifetime event, she supposed... He'd be insufferable for days which begged the question as to why he would even consider following a suggestion of Anderson's._

_Then the first part of what he said caught up with her. She wasn't on her game so things took longer to process. "Sherlock was what?" So maybe she needed a little back tracking as she was operating on fumes._

_Lestrade smirked at her. "He'd never say it. God, I don't think I could handle two shocks to the system in such short order. Here he is, going on about promptness and a need for more data, we get the body loaded into the transport, get it here and he's already off, dead guy long forgotten as he storms around your lab while you dozed on-"_

"_I was tired!" She defended her illegal siesta._

_The seasoned detective before her snorted loudly. "Who hasn't konked off at work a time or two? I do, I did last week- don't tell Sherlock. He'll try and catch me at it. But, I'm digressing here. Sherlock has been more focused on you than he has on the reason for us being here."_

_Molly blinked, eyelids still out of sync as she let this news soak in. "Are you sure he just didn't want to dick around with your time just to prove something?" _

_The DI's lips twitched up into a half smile. "I did…until I watched him prowl the lab, getting more and more ruffled as you continued to sleep on. Even I know he gets antsy over the late shift."_

_What was she supposed to say to that? It wasn't unheard of for Sherlock to harangue on issues he didn't like, her being alone at night in the lab was one of them- as was the current set up of store closet down the hall but that was neither here no there. It was one of the few genuine…things…that Sherlock did not conceal his true feelings on. His reasoning came from what had happened- and he was right, but Little came to her in a body bag and was about as unassuming as a person could get. Plus, the front doors went into automatic lock mode when the receptionist keyed out. Molly could control the access- a nifty feature that meant diddly squat if a person came in through one of the dozen other doors in her building. _

_Sherlock had been all too quick to point those out in one of his most condescending tones of voice._

_She should be over being surprised that he was anally protective about her being alone and, dare she say it, vulnerable because she was his meal ticket to the lab, morgue, and bits._

_His concern warmed her heart…even if she still wanted to strangle him for being such a prick and giving her a massive headache while expressing said concern._

"_How did he know I was even here?" She asked, and Lestrade shrugged again._

"_How does he know anything? My guess it was in the color of paint on Tara's nails earlier this week that allowed him to cleverly deduce your future napping place."_

When they had stepped back into the morgue, Sherlock snapped his head up, narrowed his eyes and declared the case closed. Boring. And hardly a four. The twin nitwits were spitting mad, but Lestrade hushed them long enough for Sherlock to finish what he had started to tell the DI back at the crime scene proper. The baritone that Molly secretly loved so much was a soothing back drop as she found a body store to roll the stiff onto- with the help of a kindly lackey who barely batted an eye at touching a dead person.

Suspect named- how Sherlock churned this stuff out was still mind blowing- evidence identified, Lestrade issued his orders and sent Donovan and Anderson ahead with the two other cops to bring the person in for questioning- Molly had asked about it being too late for night raids and Lestrade just smiled.

_-"Crime doesn't adhere to appropriate visiting hours, so neither does justice."_

"_You're a cop, not a royal marine."_

"_Shut up, Sherlock."_

She wasn't given the choice to linger- she was okay with that as she was starting to see double and things that were probably not really there- as Sherlock all but shoved her coat in her face and glared until she had it three quarters of the way on. When she started to shut stuff down, his glare returned as he impatiently tapped his foot, making her very aware that his lordship did not appreciate waiting for her to turn the two lamps off and power down three microscopes- his precious was already off and wrapped because it was his favorite.

Lestrade was busy muttering about Aloysius- the glowing goldfish seemed to freak him out- who after a full day under the tank's hood light and the lab's overheard lights, fairly burned like a light bulb when Sherlock hit the bank of switches near the door, forcing the lab into near darkness outside the eerily luminous fish tank when Molly had started to fiddle on the computer in a not so subtle message to hurry the hell up. Grabbing her bag and cow umbrella, she fell into step beside Sherlock as Lestrade led them to the front doors out in reception- the two bickering over details to a case she had zero interest in.

Lestrade was rocking a NSY panda that night, and Molly, despite how tired she was, felt a thrill about sliding into the back of the cop car. How many people honestly did this of their own volition? The front seat was full of cop crap, but she was still surprised when Sherlock folded his lanky frame into the cramped backseat with her. She had no idea why this was news to her, he always snatched the opportunity to be catered too- especially if he could belittle someone while doing it…poor Lestrade.

Pandas were on the small side to begin with, so one of her arms was snuggled securely against his warm jacket and Molly took the opportunity to sneakily rub the material of his Belstaff between her fingers. He looked good in brand names. If there was one thing she hated about the summer fashion- other than her scars that ruined all fun summer dresses and skirts- it was the lack of Sherlock's signature piece.

He looked good in Belstaff. A person couldn't ignore him in that coat- which is probably half the reason why he had selected it, the giant ham. The other was quite possibly because of the pockets.

She'd watched him pull all sorts of junk from their fathomless depths like a four year old boy throughout the years.

The two men were bitching at each other about sprouts or something equally retarded in regards to either the same case or another one- she honestly couldn't be bothered to care at this point- while Sherlock had his phone out, texting and keeping the discussion alive and engaging- this was impressive and always made her jealous that he could split his attention so perfectly and still able to do justice to both.

She could not do that- life was so unfair to give him all those nifty little perks.

Lestrade snaked the little black and white car through the London streets while they discussed evidence points; Sherlock's voice hugged her senses, lulling her into relaxing against him- points to Sherlock for not acting like a damsel in distress over her personal invasion. In fact, he hardly reacted at all, just kept up his line of reasoning to convince Lestrade of his rock solid logic. Molly did not struggle or fight the oncoming desire to sleep as the gentle jostling of the car allowed her to space out- let someone else be aware for a change. Nor did she hesitate to use the cushioned shoulder available to her immediate right- because outside of flinging himself from the moving vehicle, he was trapped.

He was also warm, and smelled good.

It was weird that she let herself think these things.

But not weird enough to keep her at bay- how often did she get to 'not hug' her best friend like this?

Sherlock was not a restful personality- it wasn't in his nature. He was too squirrelly and rambunctious and rude really, to allow for such a soothing atmosphere to settle properly. This had never seemed to stop Molly from taking advantage of him when the chance presented itself. She had witnessed him being a lazy bum enough to know that he could slow done and loaf with the best of them, that if he had to work to remove himself, he'd probably just tolerate it for sake of convenience- though by his grumping, one would never know it.

Snuggled into his Belstaff wrapped shoulder, which smelled faintly of tobacco and a clean scent that was distinctly Sherlock, she embraced the vibrations his deep voice wrought on her temple- God bless that baritone of his- and quickly surrendered to her exhaustion, safely pillowed against him as Lestrade took her home.

She could vaguely remember being nudged awake at some point but it was all a blur really. Her fatigue had been her undoing- Sherlock eventually found the time to lecture her about being dead to the world- again- around strangers a few days later. Obviously he was a little lean on other things to distract his massive brain.

He was stupidly sweet in his haughty way.

_-"Strangers? I was asleep around you and Lestrade. "_

"_Exactly. Highly unsavory."_

"_I…do you listen to yourself?"_

"_All the time."_

Even with their intervention- as impromptu as it was- Molly still succumb to the abuse she had been putting her body through. Just like Lestrade had said would happen.

How come Sherlock could treat his transport like a theme park and be unaffected- outside the overdosing, the stupid ass- yet if she worked and pushed hers for the good of the general populace and police, she got sick?

Someone must have been asleep at the wheel to let this injustice pass without question. Heaven must have people like her in charge of some of the lesser important things.

_She felt that she looked remarkably similar to the lifeless woman on her table. Lackluster hair, off colored skin, cold, dark smudges under the eyes…_

_Yes, aside from being dead, Miss Towey and Molly had many things in common._

_A slow shiver worked its way up her spine to her muzzy head, and Molly closed her eyes. It was a most curious sensation and she hated it with a passion because it did nothing but make her feel loosely put together. As if her joints had rusted over and her muscles set on her bones without care to how they would stay there. Her head felt like an inflated balloon with a tiny weight inside that flopped around every time she moved and her nose would Not. Stop. Running._

_Miserable, Molly finished sewing the massive incision in Miss Towey's chest with all the enthusiasm Miss Towey was having for Molly stitching her back up in the first place._

_Ah, yet another striking similarity. _

_The small stereo in the morgue was pumping music as loudly as she could tolerate- it had been too quiet with Bernard still gone and Sherlock had yet slither in for the day and she hated the silence enough that anything was better than listening to a heartbeat in her ears- that she had not heard the lab doors open. _

_Tara's sudden appearance on the other side of the dissection table was a bit of shocker, however- the receptionist kept a good four foot gap between her and the body. She wasn't as squeamish as Molly would have assumed, but she would rather not risk her new heels- even if they were covered in goofy little booties to keep the mess on the morgue floor from touching her darling purple pumps._

_Molly fumbled the off button on her music box with a handy elbow, killing _Matchbox Twenty_ mid song. "Hey, Tara." She croaked._

"_Girl, why are you even here today?" She asked folding her arms and Molly blinked tiredly back. "You're five seconds from head butting that corpse."_

"_Stuff won't do itself." Molly sighed, trussing off the thread and clipping the ends into neat little bundles. _

_Tara harrumphed as if that was the stupidest thing she had ever heard. "Well that's too bad. You don't feel well and this-" She waved a hand with flashing purple nails around the morgue, "- is the absolute last place you should be."_

_That was easier said than done. She still had two bodies that needed a thorough examination and multiple logs and slides to prepare and scrutinize. "I have too much to do-"_

"_Sherlock made your slides, I am halfway finished with your logs, and Donny Mathews can just deal with it." Tara snipped pointedly effectively shutting her up._

_Sherlock made her slides? Tara did the logs? "Wh-when did you…he...?"_

_The younger girl frowned slightly. "Sherlock did them yesterday when you were at the canteen scrounging for chicken noodle soup. For being shit at human, he can be remarkably considerate if it benefits him in some way as well." She added with huge eye roll. _

_Well that was…that was unexpectedly wonderful. She could get right to analyzing their contents and determine-_

"_He did the evaluating too and left the findings scribbled on that note that Joe wrote you." Tara stated, watching her with concern. "You need to go home, Molly. You're sick."_

_Damn it, figures Sherlock 'found' that little love letter from Joe. If she were feeling better and had he not done a huge chunk of work for her without her knowing, she would have been furious. Alas, she just felt awful. "You're probably right." She snuffled pathetically as she double checked her seams- something she normally never had to do anymore. Being sick sucked._

"_Of course I'm right." Tara stated flippantly before she stepped closer and gestured for Molly to back away from her rolling cart of tools. The receptionist snapped up a pair of blue latex gloves and delicately plucked a sullied organ pan from the next to the cadaver's shoulder with a solid grip from a pointer finger and thumb. "Uh…here." She handed it off to an amused Molly. Snatching the rail at the end of the table, Tara pulled the whole thing toward the large active store. _

_It was admirable- Tara lugging a dead body around in her super chic ensemble while wearing blue booties over her fabulous heels. She figured this might be what it feels like to be the help at Tyra Bank's house if Tyra started scrubbing the sink or pooper scooping herself._

_Molly had just managed to tug her cart over toward the sink and special washing machine that cleaned and sterilized the tools when Tara appeared at her shoulder. "Go strip off. I've got these." Was Tara feeling okay? The tools were still gory- and there was a good chance of blow back from the sprayer. Tara just pointed a finger and glared._

_For once, she didn't argue. Shuffling listlessly toward the hamper, Molly shucked out of her coverall smock and plastic apron, dumping all of them into a red biohazard bag to be washed._

_Out in the lab, she scooted around to Sherlock's empty microscope where sure enough, some forty slides were done up with such professional precision it made her jealous- he was too damn good at everything. There next to them, were a few sheets of paper- Joe's letter on top…poop…- where he had compiled his observations in his neat, loopy hand writing. There was a small numbering system next to each block of text to coincide with a slide- his system, yet another one she had absorbed during the first wave of resistance to his invasion._

_Pulling his work toward her, she let her eyes skim the slide details, before flicking the light on his microscope and sliding the appropriate sample home under the observer to see for herself._

_God, the hospital was seriously blundering not trying to weasel him into working for them- not that he'd take a position here, or anywhere. He loved his cases and hated routine. Shame really, as Sherlock could probably make all the difference in the world if he were to focus that considerable brain on a problem like cancer or AIDS- she made fun about him accidently discovering a cure for these things but the unfortunate reality was that he could probably do it given enough time and desire to find the answer. Medicine, outside of his case work, bored him however. He had no interest assisting the infirm- plus his bedside manner would do Hitler proud in his callousness. _

_Killing the light source, she slotted the slide back with its irritatingly perfect little friends and moved to survey the damage to her precious little note._

_Plucking the small packet up, Molly quirked an eyebrow at how he corrected Joe's grammar and punctuation- Jesus he was a brilliant git- before dropping her eyes to the sendoff at the bottom that had the simple words 'What an idiot' scrawled next to Joe's name._

_Sherlock could be such a jerk._

_Grabbing the box of slides and his analysis, Molly toddled wearily back to her desk. A wave of dizziness had her pausing so as to not drop her cargo- she'd just curl up in the fetal position behind her desk and await death if she klutzed this up._

_Dragging her bag up on her desk, she stuffed Sherlock's work into a folder and filed it alongside her newest issue of Cosmo- Wade had given it to her after he finished reading it- and then started straightening the daily accumulation of work and papers. She could spend her sick day redoing the slide findings- normally, she'd look at everything so a trained professional was still technically doing the work, but at this point, she could care less. Sherlock's work was a sure thing. She could trust him._

_Tara all but kicked the door down from the morgue, face contorted in disgust as she ripped the booties from her feet with a still gloved hand. "I hate the morgue. It's so gross." Molly nodded in agreement, dabbing a shirt sleeve at her nose. "Alright, go home now. It's all done. I'll shove any new arrivals into the large walk in- Donny will say yes, unless he wants to do the autopsies himself, he will not complain. Wade said he'd blast the floor clean once he finishes surgery. I'll also spam Bernard's email with porn and dating adds if I find the time." She added as she whipped around the lab, shutting down microscopes and computers as she went._

"_Thanks Tara." Molly shivered. She really wasn't feeling all that well. _

_She was lucky to have such great people willing to lend a hand when she needed it. _

"_Don't thank me yet. Sherlock's going to whine the second he finds out you've gone home. I might need compensation myself after dealing with him." She said this like it was a common occurrence. _

"_Tell him that if he promises not take ANYTHING, I'll make it worth his while." She didn't know with what yet- it didn't really matter in this instance, Sherlock was easy to please since any body part was a good body part._

"_Ooo, sound's promising." Tara cooed at her, and Molly couldn't help the wet snort. Tara never passed up the chance to tease Molly about a thing between her and Sherlock- despite the obvious fact she was DATING Joe. She tormented Sherlock about it too, but it was like joshing a brick wall and very rarely did the receptionist get a reaction._

_It had been three years almost- she had yet to throw in the towel. _

"_Sure, let him think that." Molly sighed. "I'm heading out. Call if you need anything?" _

"_I won't." Tara flapped her hands at her after pushing her cow umbrella into her hands- because of COURSE it had been raining that morning. "Get going. Shoo!"_

_The Tube was bracing- more so than it had been earlier that day- and not in a good way. There was too much noise and movement that left Molly feeling distinctly queasy by the time she was lurching from the doors into her home station. Praying she wouldn't toss an cookies in public- because that, outside of flushing a toilet at a party and the water not going down was one of the scariest and most embarrassing things that could possibly happen to a human being- Molly lugged her way up the steps to the street, aching the entire way._

_The last flight up was slicked with water and Molly groaned. She was sick of rain. _

_Popping her umbrella open, she pushed onward as the taps from the falling water hit the fabric in an increasing tattoo. _

_Home was only a half a block down the way, but she needed to hit the corner grocery to get a few things- medicine, Gatorade, soda, stomach friendly foods- her flat wasn't stocked for her being ill over the course of a few days._

_If there was a chance she could magically get better without any of these things to aide her along, she wouldn't bother going. She hated the thought of hauling her shopping home feeling the way she did._

_But no one else was going to do it, and the longer she wandered the streets shivering the worse she was probably going to get. _

_The corner shop was a moderately sized place that she had been coming too since first moving into the neighborhood almost four years ago. The man that owned the place was super cheerful, but his first mate that ran the day to day operations was just shy of making a crocodile seem cuddly. He was big, burly, and would be a heck of a lot more at home in an auto body shop than running the till behind the counter at the local stop and rob._

_That was probably the point. Hank looked as if he could catch bullets with his teeth if he tried and live to beat the gunman into pulp. _

_The other thing about Hank was that he didn't allow vagrants or loiters to clog the front stoop or any space within the twenty foot radius of his front door- especially in shoddy weather. So when Molly made the turn on the last corner, seeing a homeless person huddled against the wall was like a slap in the face._

_Her neighborhood wasn't the best of places- but it most certainly wasn't the worst- and there was the occasional drifter or homeless person panhandling on the corners, but never here in this area where Hank the bulldog kept a tight ship. It was relief to not see them because Molly always felt so guilty when she did. Here she was to buy a few things- some unnecessary- just to make herself feel better because of a cold or something before heading back to her nice warm flat to loaf on a huge comfy sofa until she felt better. Seeing someone hugging stone walls, or huddling on park benches in all weather- cold, rainy, snowy- because they nowhere else to go was just bit too much. _

"_Spare some change?" Came the quaking voice as she neared the door and she felt ashamed of what she was about to do. _

"_Sorry, no." Before dipping into the shop._

_Molly hated it. She hated seeing their suffering, but damn was she not a better person to try and alleviate their suffering in some way. She never gave them money- or at least nothing larger than a pound for the very sobering fact that her brother had used panhandling to get drug money from unsuspecting good samaritans who hadn't any idea they were fueling an addiction that killed. He died with a needle in his arm and a hundred pounds in his pocket- all in small denominations. He had begged his way to death. _

_Molly, at the risk of seeming cruel, refused to assist in the destruction of another's life or family. She refused outright. She wouldn't do it- she couldn't. And she felt terrible because how could she walk past a cold, broken, and despairing person and not feel something? Hank must have not seen this one yet, and Molly would be sure not to say anything because it was really coming down and the stoop outside had a very generous overhang._

_Sniffling, feeling chilled even though her face felt like a small super nova, Molly numbly collected her items. More Nyquil, more tea, and honey. Gatorade and soda for the potential stomach bug, bread for toast, and a few more impulse items. Scuttling up to the front counter, she tried not to quail under Hank's beady stare- did she look like a hard core criminal with her dripping nose and cow umbrella?_

_As he scanned, she bagged, and separated the items accordingly before swiping her card. He grunted something that could have been a 'nice evening' but she couldn't really tell even after four years, and turned to continue stocking his cigarettes, thoroughly dismissing her. _

_Juggling her load- yeah, not gonna make it the one block home at this rate- Molly hobbled awkwardly toward the exit. Fingers were cramping already as she wheezed out a shaky 'thank you' to the older man who was kind enough to hold the door, Molly rallied her reserves to finish her mission._

_And turned immediately toward the homeless person still huddled under the store's awning. _

"_Here." She set one bag down on a spot not quite as wet as all the others. _

_Startled brown eyes set in a dirty face slid from the bag up to meet her own, and Molly started at seeing a woman staring back at her. "I…Th-thank you."_

_No. "No it's the least I can d-" She bit her sentence off. In reality she could do more…but she couldn't adopt every misfortunate person in the city. This wasn't about her anyway. "It's not much. I'm also not feeling very well myself so wash your hands." She added and then cringed. Wash her hands…Jesus Molly._

_The woman just watched her with wide eyes, only nodding as Molly stumbled her parting. "Thank you." She said in what was probably the sincerest voice Molly had ever heard. She dipped her head, humbled, before movement from the corner of her eye drew her attention back toward the shop windows. Seeing a scowling Hank on the move, she fought a curse down. The rain had yet to let up, and that bag wasn't water proof. _

_Jostling her load around, Molly hesitated only a second before handing off her umbrella. "Take this as well."_

"_No, Miss, I can' do tha'." Her unfamiliar accent was thick on her tongue as she shook her head. "You've already been too kind."_

_No she hadn't. "Please, just take it. It'll keep you dry enough to find a place that Hank can't throw you from." She said quickly, voice cracking in her urgency. Shutting the giant cow printed umbrella till it just looked like a mish mash of black and white, Molly leaned it against the wall. "He's coming out here. Take them." And then she ducked into the deluge, huddled over her two remaining sacks as she hurried quickly down the side walk so as to not be called back._

In hindsight, giving her umbrella up in the middle of a freezing downpour while sick had been a really rash decision- she didn't regret it, she could just buy a new umbrella that wasn't splashed with cow. She only lived a block or so up the road, but it was enough to chill her bones and rev her fever, exacerbating her illness. A hot shower didn't help; she had still trembled even wrapped in soft pajama bottoms and a thick old sweater of her dads while filling the kettle and she rapidly decided that making tea was too daunting of a task, so Molly popped a cap of medicine and pulled her quilt from her bed to curl up in a nest on the couch in front of some old program on Film Four, hoping a bit of rest would make a world of difference.

Ugh…she hated doing this alone and did not care if that made her sound like a gargantuan baby. Being sick and by oneself was awful. She could remember having to do it a few times when her mom was overseas visiting her sister and every time she felt like death was at her door no matter how mild the ailment.

Joe was in Manchester this week and Molly didn't feel up to calling him to reveal how sick she was- there wasn't a point really, to phoning him as he wasn't about magically apparate into her kitchen and make her soup just because she was running a temperature. Her mum wasn't home when she called, and Molly didn't want to leave a message that sounded as pitiful as 'I'm sick, momma'- even though that was a hundred percent the case.

The antihistamines were doing their job, though, and it wasn't long before she was pulled into a comforting sleep. How long she slept she didn't know, only that the primordial urge to heave woke her from a sleep so deep she didn't even dream without any trouble what so ever. Bolting from her warm cocoon in a desperate bid to not hurl on herself, Molly spent a generous amount of time hugging the porcelain thrown as if it were the only thing anchoring her to the ground. She hadn't eaten anything since a mediocre breakfast of tea, so what came up was mostly spit and stomach acid.

Thank God Joe hadn't been around for this- there was nothing alluring about having one's head shoved into the bowl of a toilet like their very life depended on it.

Shaking like small dog, Molly rode the lurching waves till the bitter end. She had managed to get her hair out of the way, but felt a hysterical wish to have Sherlock there to help her make doubly sure.

God, she was delusional as well as sick.

Gingerly, after an undisclosed amount of time bemoaning her fate in the bathroom, Molly reinserted herself back into her spot on the couch. She was freezing, quivering, and could easily recall having no interest what so ever to answer the phone that was ringing on the coffee table in front of her.

_Watching the little screen light up as it peeped for attention, Molly slowly blinked a crusty eye, unimpressed. It was one in the morning…what could anyone possibly want with her?_

_Sometimes she got prank phone calls- those actually amused her more than anything- and it had been a good year and some change since Sherlock started letting himself into the lab instead of nagging her to do it- that she wasn't as keen on but picking up the remains of the Titanic with a pair of tweezers would have been easier and less bothersome. He promised he didn't raid the morgue- shockingly he had kept his word- when he did this, but all bets were off the second she stepped past the front doors._

_Her sister didn't call so late without reason and that wasn't her sister's mobile number. It wasn't her mum's either._

_Well this mystery wasn't going to solve itself, and the answer was readily a green button click away. _

"_Hullo?" She voice crackled roughly into the phone- good Lord she sounded like she'd been smoking her weight in cigarettes._

"_Hooper." A voice that was familiar stated crisply into the phone._

"…_yes." She tried to clear her throat. "Who is this?" _

"_Donovan," And Molly suddenly realized why she recognized the caller. "Lestrade's had a bit of a mishap tonight and is in the A and E-"_

"_What?! What happened?" She shot up from her spot, heart starting to pound frantically in her chest. _

_Donovan's huffy sigh had her grating her teeth. "I was just getting to that. He was stabbed while we were in the middle of a drug's bust-"_

"_Stabbed?!" Her throat closed up around the word. She'd seen stabbing victims before- usually they were past the point of help when she saw them but-_

"_Yes! Stabbed. Stop interrupting so I can get this out!" Donovan snapped down the line, and the only thing that stayed Molly's tongue from telling her to suck it was the tremor in the normally abrasive detective's voice. "He's alive- in critical condition because it punctured a lung, but he's alive." _

_Molly was pulling at her face, mind racing over the possibilities of complications and infection in that area. _

_But he was alive. Her Lestrade was alive._

_She brought a quaking hand to her mouth and prayed she wouldn't throw up from the relief flushing her body. "Thank, God…" She sighed, repeating that statement over and over again. She didn't know what she would have done if something worse had happened to him…_

"_Just thought you might want to know." Came the clipped reply. "London General." And she hung up._

_The clicking of Donovan's disconnect was what clued her in to being hung up on, but she couldn't find the energy to be upset at how cold the DS was about it all._

_Lestrade was alive- and would be okay, damn it. She refused to allow anything as piddle-y as infection or complications take him from her. He would stay alive if she had to wrestle his soul from the devil himself. _

_Sucking in a huge breath, she held it and tried to determine how sick she really was- she was going to go see him, just to assure herself what Donovan had already confirmed. She had to see him to make sure, but being sick was a major inconvenience factor- she wouldn't be able to stay with him, she wouldn't risk him beyond her own selfish desire to physically witness his chest rising and falling as God had intended. That she would see him again as he pushed through her double gray doors in the lab and soon._

_Her heart was still thundering in her ribs- some of it might have been because of her flu but mostly it was from fear. That soul consuming fear of nearly loosing someone she loved. Oh, she wasn't a fool about Lestrade and his job- it was bloody dangerous, and Lestrade took the unconventional and admiringly stupid route of running the front lines himself as opposed to letting anyone else do it- something a DI hadn't done really since the olden days. Shoot outs, scuffles, foot chases- if it involved Lestrade's precinct, his division, or his Serious Crimes unit, he was either right alongside them, or wasn't terribly far behind. _

_She had seen the telltale signs of how rough his work was on him- he had come to the morgue sporting a wicked bruise or cut and a smile on more occasions than she had ever bothered to recount. But never had he ever so narrowly avoided that one permanent consequence that his job could bestow- and had- on a person by his side or even on he himself. _

_At least since she had known him- it was a first and boy was she not at all pleased to see it._

_She was terrified._

_Oh, she could not stand this not knowing for sure- she had to see him. Fighting to free herself from the tentacle grip of her blankets, Molly forced herself with sheer will alone to glide down the hall to her room and change. She could be sick with the flu on another day- now was not the time._

_She had to go see Lestrade. Even if he was asleep and she had to stab someone herself to just check that he was alright. She had to make sure- she couldn't leave this to Donovan's word alone._

_He might trust her implicitly, but Molly did not. At least not with something and someone as important as Lestrade._

_She would not leave this to anyone else. _

_Kicking off her sleep pants- and ignoring the crawling chill that raised the flesh of her bare legs, Molly yanked on a pair of jeans and tugged a brush through her hair a few times to get the Dr. Frankenstein, mad scientist, bird nest look to go away. _

_Looking like a crazy would not convince anyone that she wasn't about to sport a fever into a hospital just to visit someone- which was the equivalent of a live bomb to hospital staff. She had to hide her symptoms until she saw Lestrade- she had resigned herself completely, as opposed to maybe, to the fact she would not be able to stay by his side when a dizzy wave had her gripping her chest of drawers for balance. The flu could piss off until she checked on her DI, and then it could come back and cripple her into a pathetic mess on the curb. Not a second before._

_Hair pulled back into a semi respectable pony tail, Molly hurried to the bathroom to brush her teeth and rinse her face, ignoring for all she was worth how the taste of the toothpaste made her stomach roil and curdle, or how hot her face was that even warm water felt cool against her heated skin._

_Go away flu. Sod off! _

_Because that had always worked so well when she was younger- she was a twit when ill._

_She was still fighting the shakes as she gathered her bag and phone. Popping a couple of fever suppressants in hope that they would keep her little charade under wraps for a few hours, Molly turned to hunt down her rain jacket and shoes._

_It wasn't raining right now, but she was down one cow umbrella and had already kicked herself in the balls once with the infernal weather. _

_Fully assembled, Molly checked her look in the floor length body mirror she had in her front room one last time to see if there was anything obviously out of place about her- aside from flushed skin and glassy eyes. Being in the medical profession herself- even though she worked with dead people mostly- Molly felt that there was a good chance she could pull this off if she didn't allow anyone to look too closely. The coloring and shine to her eyes she could easily- and knowing her, truthfully- be attested to emotion over her friend. She wasn't familiar enough with the staff at London General to know how quick they would be to oust her for a threat- not that she cared about that part aside from Lestrade being possibly at little at risk. She would have to be careful and pray none of them had a Sherlockian sense of perception-_

_Shit! Sherlock! _

_Oh, my, God, how had she forgotten Sherlock?!_

_Had anyone told him? Had he been involved? Was he okay? Those two did these sorts of things all the time it seemed like- would Donovan have told her? No, no...no matter how awful of a personality Donovan had, Molly didn't believe she would have kept her from knowing if both of her boys were hurt._

_Right?_

_Right…she hoped._

_Molly almost splattered her bag all over the floor in her bid to scrounge up her phone. He could be a gigantic dick about sentiment all he wanted at face value, but if anything happened to Lestrade- anything permanent- she knew for a fact that Sherlock wouldn't take it very well._

_At all._

_And Donovan would probably have not thought to call him being as she hated his guts for whatever stupid reason she had conjured up in her tiny brain._

_Cow!_

_Fumbling around for her mobile, she quickly pulled up the consulting detective's number and hit call, ignoring the pompous voice in her ear telling her to 'text, he preferred to text' while her heart banged loudly in her ears._

_When he picked up on the third ring, Molly didn't wait for him to be a brat._

"_Sherlock?" Her voice broke. "Sherlock, where are you?"_

"_Molly?" He sounded clear, as if he had already been awake- which he probably was seeing as he detested sleeping unlike normal people._

_Sniffling loudly because her nose had started to run from her hunched position over her bag, she plunged on. "Sherlock, are you home?" She had to know…_

"_Yes. What is it?" His deep voice was hollowed somewhat by the tinny reception in her phone but Molly could hear as it sharpened on his question. She must have been annoying him with her calling._

_Wanker. This wasn't a text appropriate message!_

"_I just got a call from Donovan that Lestrade was injured during a bust or something-"_

"_The drug's bust?" _

_Figures he'd know about it. "You knew already?"_

"_How bad?" Guess not._

_Her head was aching from the angle- all the jelly between her ears pressing hard on her eyes. Sniveling to keep the junk from her nose from dribbling on her pub trawler, Molly tilted her head up. "He was stabbed and it punctured a lung. He's at London General-"_

"_Where are you?"_

"_Leaving. I'm going up there."_

"_You're sick." She wasn't allowing herself to be impressed with him on that one- someone might have spilled the beans already._

"_Don't tell anyone or I won't get to see him." She snapped. "I am not staying, I just have to check."_

_He grunted something at her and hung up without preamble- the people she knew were so rude._

_Deed done, Molly sighed in mild relief as she dialed the number for a cabbie, and spent the time waiting for her ride attempting to make herself seem as unsick as she could manage._

_The journey to the hospital was fraught with the irritating gurgle of an upset stomach, and she gnashed her teeth and swallowed repeatedly to keep the urge at bay. Stupid flu…she was not hurling in a cab. Chanting a simple 'I'm okay, I'm okay' in her head, as if those words had the power to keep the empty contents of her stomach exactly where they should be, Molly waited impatiently for the hospital to unfold before the wheels of the cab. It was taking an extraordinary amount of time. _

_London was aglow in the orange of street lights, and the simple quiet of near deserted streets did nothing to ease the tweak of pain near her heart. She already knew what lay beneath the surface of such calm waters, and the evidence of how rapidly the world turned was painfully resting in a bed somewhere up ahead. God, what if she had lost him…_

_She hated how the fear, the panic, and concern wouldn't leave her. She hated knowing that he had been hurt. She hated how unfair it was that her two greatest friends ran around this city fighting crime willy nilly- okay so maybe it wasn't quite that bad, but she knew for a fact Lestrade stuck his neck out._

_Sherlock too- of the two of them, he was worse!_

_She let her head thump gently against the cab window, and closed her eyes on the scenery of brick row houses and grungy alleyways, fighting down both her emotional trepidation and what was likely to be vomit._

_The sudden lurching stop of the car had her blinking- had she fallen asleep?...plausible- and found the large, neutral building before her had somehow snuck up while she was occupied elsewhere. _

_Forking over a fist full of hastily assembled notes, Molly dipped out of the car quickly. Instead of heading in past the sliding automatic doors, Molly booked it as fast as her wobbly legs would allow her across the street into one of the shadier passageways- not smart but if someone tried to mug her, she'd just barf on them._

_And barf she did. Behind a large dumpster. Like a hobo, or a drunkard._

_One hand was braced against the dirty brick wall as she made her deposit all over the floor and she resisted being amused at how gross she was- and furiously prayed she didn't wet herself from the force of her stomach spasms. _

"_That is disgusting." _

_She didn't bother to even respond as her body rocked from another heave- good Lord, kill her now! How had Sherlock found her? Another wave of sickness pulled her thought train right of its tracks as Molly ducked her head, not even attempting to respond to him._

"_You're too sick to be here, you know." Thanks, Doc Obvious._

_She was panting as she pushed herself up and away from the foamy mess at her feet and scuttled unevenly back across the way to the other side. Her eyes dancing over to the entrance and was surprised to see Sherlock leaning up against the wall at her shoulder instead, smoking a cigarette. How did he even move so fast?_

"_You're like a damn cat. You need a bell." Her voice was about as smooth as rubble and it hurt to speak. Tipping her head back against the cold wall behind her, Molly closed her eyes to help calm her tummy, which was still churning madly away and took several deep breaths to help settle her shakes and gurgles. Feeling like she could risk her life to look at him, she rolled her head weakly to the side and took in his overly casual slouch._

"_Perpetual vigilance would do you well to learn, Hooper." He dragged on his cancer stick, the cherry at the end flaring briefly before dying down. The smell- something she would admit to enjoying when it was outside faintly floating along on the wind- hit her right on in the face, stinging her eyes and nose, angering the beast in her gut._

"_Oh- do you mind?" She hissed at him. "How many times do I have to nag you about smoking those!?"_

_He pulled once more from his bud before dropping the spent filter onto the wet concrete beneath his pricey shoes. "I dunno. I never remember those conversations." _

_She was too sick for this. Squinting up at him, it was hard to make out the details of his face in the gloom, but she could tell he was looking back at her. "I would have thought you would have been with him." Oh, well that came out of absolutely nowhere, and she tried not to cringe at how that sounded so much like an accusation._

_Maybe it was. _

_His attention seemed to cut perceptibly. "I wasn't. It was 'text book'. He wasn't quick enough." _

_She didn't know what to say to that- in her mind, it was everyone's but Lestrade's fault, whether that was true or not. She knew that Lestrade would shrug and nod along with Sherlock. It was part of the job, he would tell her. It wasn't fair to blame Sherlock for anything because he wasn't involved- it wasn't fair at all._

_Still…_

_She sighed, and pushed away from the wall, trying to ignore the guilt that was banging hard in her mind- but her tongue rebelled at acknowledging she knew. She hadn't even made it past him when he snapped._

"_Oh, how droll. Blaming me are you?"_

_He needed to stop reading her mind. "Not at all, Sherlock. Don't be silly." She shuffled back down to the narrow entrance, feeling terrible at dumping any culpability upon his shoulders. "I'm sorry if it sounded like I was."_

_He snarled behind her, but she kept going, trotting unsteadily back across the way to the hospital entrance. She could feel him stalking her and fought the urge to speed up- Sherlock was like a predator in many regards. "I wasn't brought in with this case- it was a text book operation."_

_Since when was anything text book with Sherlock Bloody Holmes? "I know." She said._

_God she needed to stop. It wasn't his damn fault. _

_It wasn't. _

"_Then why are you-"_

"_Because if you had been with him, he wouldn't have been hurt." She cut him off, before quickly plunging through the hospital doors. "It's irrational and stupid and not. your. fault. I know. I just feel like you would have made a difference is all. I know you have nothing to do with this, that you were not at fault here."_

_She could feel her soul being sucked into his black mood._

_Great…she made him mad. _

_And she didn't blame him for getting mad- she would be too if he pointed at her and said what she had._

_Even if she secretly felt it to be true…_

_He didn't get a chance to respond however because the second they pushed into the waiting room, Molly spotted Donovan huddled down on a solo chair, a cup of something forgotten in her hands and a tired, lost look about her that was completely alien to the bossy copper. There were several other members of Lestrade's team present as well, but Molly didn't know them well enough to engage them at the moment._

_She wanted an update on her DI._

"_Sally." Molly called and winced as her voice all but croaked the woman's name like a flipping frog._

_Donovan's head snapped up and her eyes hardened over at seeing them. "Hullo." There was enough ice in that greeting to chill a lake._

_Ugh…she wasn't up for this. "Any news?"_

"_He's in surgery so no." What a bitch. "I see you brought the Freak." Status has not changed on her assessment of Donovan's persona._

_ARG! "Don't start, Donovan." Molly glared. "This is neither the time nor place."_

_She sneered up at Molly as Sherlock all but threw himself into the chair directly opposite Donovan's, and even though there was good car length between them, it still felt claustrophobic. "Do shut up." He said and Molly was unsure who he was speaking too precisely._

_Shoulders sagging, she sank down on to the chair directly beside Sherlock's- he had already assumed his signature pose with his hands pressed before his lips in thought, eyes inspecting Donovan as if she were marginally worth his notice."Lambeth? Screw up." Sherlock said lazily and Donovan fairly steamed in her seat. This meant nothing to Molly, who felt rather like a kid watching two adults argue. She wasn't sure she cared for the comparison, yet was too sick to really give a flying fig when it boiled down._

_Let them nip at each other to pass the time. To each their own and all that…_

"_You don't know the half of it so piss off." The detective's rejoinder was dripping disdain for the man before her. _

_Sherlock was unmoved- it would take a bulldozer, or a kamikaze hug, to do that- as he quirked a brow. "The Turner family isn't exactly riddled with intelligence. But then again, neither is Serious Crimes."_

"_Fuck you!" Donovan barked. "You weren't there!"_

"_I know. I idiotically assumed you capable of accomplishing such a mediocre operation without assistance. My apologies for allowing you to drop the ball."_

_Her eyes shimmered with a hatred that actually had Molly looking away. "You are such a Goddamned Freak, Holmes. Where do you get off saying that to me?"_

_He let his face slowly roll into a malicious smirk. "Seeing as you knew about the Turners running with the likes of Scott Saunders, I would have hoped you would have kept a sharper eye out. Wasn't it you that linked the obvious and identified him as a dealer with too much too lose?"_

_Molly froze at the name, Donovan's boiling rage inconsequential. "Scott? Scott Lee Saunders? Scott stabbed Greg?" She blurted loudly in between their explosive bouts, drawing two sets of heated eyes. She had to make sure…_

_Donovan's mouth worked wordlessly before she had a dawning expression clear her face. "Oh…I see." _

_Sherlock narrowed his eyes. "I highly doubt that."_

_The detective scanned Molly from head to toe, before letting her lip curl. "I shouldn't be surprised you know the name- all three of them- of one of London's most notorious drug dealers seeing as you're all chummy with one of his best customers." She condemned wickedly._

_Molly blinked, stunned by this news- whether it was true or not, she couldn't gauge how best to ask. It was too messed up. Too simple in coincidence, too close to the heart._

_Sherlock…Sherlock bought from the same guy that…_

"_Wrong again, Donovan. For God sakes, you are incredibly dim." Sherlock retorted, the rich sound to his voice barely breaching the fog of her mind._

_What were the odds…_

"_She isn't denying it!" _

"_She doesn't have too. It's an assumption that is far afield in terms of accuracy, and you're a moron!"_

_She was going to be sick…_

_Rising quietly from her seat, she ignored Donovan completely, and just managed a pinched 'bathroom' to Sherlock- who, for all his constipated irritation, looked slightly unsettled. Crap, she prayed he didn't think it was because of this conversation that she was fleeing. She needed a toilet- she was gonna puke. The restrooms were down a short hall, and thank goodness for that- she was already lurching in her bid to vomit up her toes. She rudely shoved through two people- later identified as Anderson and Craig- before she slammed into the ladies._

_A bog was too lofty an aspiration as it turned out- she had to settle for the sink and hope no one innocently wandered into to her defacing of private property._

_Good, Lord she felt awful- the miniature respite in the lobby already flushing down the drain as her body violently rocked with another round of sick. It was in between mind numbing toss ups that she let her thoughts center on the argument probably still waging out in the lobby._

_Stupid. Sodding. Flu._

_Stupid. Sodding. Donovan. _

_Oh, this was terrible. It. Just. Figures…just flipping, tap dancing, nut punching, figured that Scott effing Saunders was behind Lestrade being hurt. Behind Sherlock's supply of cocaine!_

_Her brother's best friend…_

_The guy that allowed himself to be pulled into her brother's dark world- the same guy that sat in the room next door as her brother fell into a seizing fit that eventually killed him the night he overdosed on heroin._

_That bastard was making waves in her life again!_

_She tried vomiting once more and was rewarded with nothing but a deep gag and the shakes for her efforts. It was hard being sick when there was nothing to quench her body's repetitive purging._

_After that, she opted for just trying to bring her erratic breathing back down to normal. She had to get back out there to Sherlock- she needed to ask him._

_She needed to ask him about the drugs. _

_She needed to see Lestrade._

_Then she needed to get home- preferably before the hospital staff discovered her lurking amongst their patients._

_When a sufficient amount of time had passed, when the tremors of the oncoming all-consuming need to hurl abated and she felt confident enough to stray away from the immediate convenience of a sink, toilet, or handy bin, Molly splashed her face with water, swallowed a few daring mouthfulls and gathered her courage. _

_She had never really discussed the drugs with him…_

_Not once since she found him prostrate on his kitchen floor…_

_What an unfortunate reminder._

_But she had to know. _

_She hadn't realized how hot she was until she pushed the door open and the cool air circulating the lobby kissed her fever heated cheeks and forehead. Man…small plants could probably ignite from proximity to her face alone._

_Toddling back down the hall toward Sherlock and what appeared to be a good chunk of Serious Crimes- shouldn't they be working to bring Saunders down instead of loitering around like this?- whose ranks had swelled exponentially since her hasty exodus._

_Fantastic…_

_Her spot beside Sherlock was thankfully vacant, granted, he wasn't exactly a warm character that just anybody would want to snuggle up beside- which worked for her because she wasn't just anybody- and she didn't have the energy to fight for a seat in the now crowded lobby. _

_He was watching her over the tips of his fingers, had been the second she rounded the corner, and Molly offered him a weak smile for his notice. Ignoring the stares of the rest of the group, she tucked herself in at his side with a small groan. "I don't feel so hot." She muttered quietly to him._

_A deep hum met her statement- something more felt than heard- and Molly closed her eyes to block out the world, trusting Sherlock to keep her informed of any new developments. Plus, Donovan was glaring at her and Molly had decided she was no longer dealing with the ornery woman. No Lestrade, no nice accommodating Molly Hooper._

_Donovan had other plans. "How do you know Scott Saunders?" She asked steadily, and Molly had to keep from reacting to her voice._

"_I thought you already deduced it." She sniffed, rubbing Sherlock's favorite method in her face and enjoying every second of it._

"_He stabbed Lestrade. It would be wise for you to tell what you know." _

_That she did react too. Eyes flying open she jerked herself to keep from looking at Donovan less she see something in her fevered stare. Instead Molly peeped up at Sherlock who had a bored look on his face as he watched Donovan 'work'. _

_Tired gaze still fixated on Sherlock's profile- which was ridiculously easy to do and remain intrigued- Molly kept her voice carefully impartial. "I don't know anything about him now."_

"_Liar." Donovan grouched- and Molly fought the tremor racing up her spine, reminding her of how not well she really was._

_God, how long was this going to take? How was Lestrade doing? Was he out of surgery yet? "I'm not lying."_

_At this, Sherlock's steel blue stare came to rest on her and she felt her face soften at how grumpy he looked._

_Some things never changed. _

"_I don't believe a word of it." Donovan kept digging, and Molly decided that the detective really wasn't very good at the detecting and questioning part of her job._

"_Well I'm not trying to make you a convert, so don't fret." She sighed, feeling the ache of her lungs and the flash of discomfort near her heart from fever induced pains. Breaking eye contact with her silent friend, Molly slumped sideways until her head was pillowed on the armrest between them. She felt another Sherlock rumble and relaxed infinitesimally, shutting her eyes- she was so glad he was beside her…_

_It made ignoring Donovan easy- he was very good a demonstrating. _

_Now if only the universe would cooperate and let Lestrade be a hundred percent okay, that would be great._

_She heard Donovan snarl something extremely vulgar and Molly internally sighed at the older woman's temper tantrum. Nobody was interested in hearing it, Donovan- not even your little monkey Anderson._

_Tilting her head over so she could see Sherlock's arms if she bothered to crack an eyeball, she shifted around to find a slightly more comfortable position. "Wake me if I fall asleep." She said softly, knowing that he would hear her. _

"_Going home would be more prudent." That honeyed baritone resonated around her and she swallowed._

"_Greg first. I won't leave a moment before."_

_Sherlock sighed, put out. "He'll be fine."_

"_You don't have to stay." She told him and nothing but silence met her ears. Yeah, you can't pull a fast one on ol' Molly Sentimental Hooper, pal. She knew he wouldn't budge until Lestrade checked out as stable in his eyes. _

_How did she know this?_

_Easy. _

_Sherlock was still in that waiting room, with a whole slew of people he did not like, doing nothing but waiting for someone else to finish piecing a problem back together._

_It gave her hope for him._

_She was just settling in for the long haul- which had the recognizable markings of turning into an enormous suckfest because the unease in her stomach was growing again and she had no way of communicating to her body that she had nothing more to toss up- when a worn doctor in wrinkled blue scrubs pushed through the ER doors. _

"_Greg Lestrade?" He said loudly, and Molly's head snapped up and followed Sherlock's fixed point of attention over her shoulder._

_Her stomached started to coil and she swallowed wetly. No. not yet._

_Her body had the worst timing! Positively Sherlockian!_

_Donovan stood immediately with Anderson and Craig flanking her. There were a few others from Serious Crimes along too, but they kept their distance as Donovan all but stated her claim vocally. "How is he?"_

_If the doctor was surprised by how many people were here, he didn't show it. "Not out of the woods just yet, but barring any unforeseen problems, he'll make a full recovery without consequence."_

_And Molly disengaged at that point with a soul soothing sigh. _

_He was okay. He'd be okay!_

_Thank God almighty he was okay!_

_Shame she couldn't say the same about herself. As the doctor continued his spiel about the procedure and care Lestrade had experienced, answering Donovan's inquiries as he went, Molly gulped, once, twice…_

_When she swallowed deeply the third time, eyes starting to water from the will she was exerting to not hurl on the carpet, it was Sherlock who had enough._

"_Oh, just go take care of it would you? You aren't duping anybody." He said lowly over her head and she didn't need more of an incentive. _

_Skirting the trio crowding the doctor, Molly booked if for the loo doors- this time she snagged the handicap stall because hell no was she upchucking in a toilet without handle bars at the rate her body was going._

_It was getting worse- enough so that she braved chugging some water to keep the horrible taste at bay- and by the time she was weakly pushing through the door back into the hall, she was ashen under the unnatural fevered flush on her cheeks- she knew, she saw the mirror. Sherlock was nowhere to be seen when she made it back to the lobby and she stopped in her tracks, casting her eyes about looking to see if maybe he had gotten stuck in a corner somewhere. _

_He wasn't anywhere to be seen, and Molly was struck by a pang of hurt- he hadn't waited for her._

_Feeling stupid, and more than a little abandoned, Molly padded slowly back to the chair she had been occupying earlier and sank down. She hadn't been gone that long- _

_A hand was shoved under nose with a small cup of pills._

_Jerking, Molly shot her eyes up and was astonished to see Sherlock standing there hold a cup of water in his other hand. _

"_Don't give me that look." He stated waspishly, hand shaking once, rattling the pills in the little cup to bring her attention back to where it should be. _

_She should be questioning where he came by such things- concerned that he probably nicked them from a spare hospital room somewhere, knowing him like she did- worried that he was being reckless stealing drugs from a medical institution like London General-_

"_Stop worrying, and take them. You will never make it back to see the incompetent Inspector if you are engaged in other more pressing pursuits."_

_That was one way to put it. Molly's unsteady hand came up and weakly accepted the small cup and without preamble, threw the three little pills back without even asking what they were- normally a highly dangerous and extremely stupid move with him as it could be ANYTHING in those little pills in that unassuming cup._

_But she couldn't be bothered as Sherlock passed her the cup of water he had with him. _

"_Thank you." She told him stacking the cups, sinking down further in her chair. _

_He took his seat back and immediately fell into his special thinking position, not saying anything more. She skittered a hazardous look back toward the ER doors before turning to him- now was her chance and she had to do it quickly before the urge to die or vomit overcame her, or worse, Sally came back. "Where are the others?"_

_He closed his eyes as if she were an extremely annoying pest he couldn't figure out how to be rid of- probably true and entirely his problem. "They are visiting the fool who had his lung punctured." He snorted something she didn't catch before, "How embarrassing."_

_Right, because getting stabbed by a kingpin drug dealer was a huge humiliating experience that reeked of 'rookie'. Whatever, she had more pressing things to ask him._

"_Please tell me Sally was completely wrong and you did not…buy…from Scott?" Please tell her no, please tell her no. He could even insult the hell out of her while doing it as long as he said no._

_Say no, damnit!_

_Whatever he had been expecting from her, this apparently was not it. Pale eyes snapped to her brown ones, and if he didn't look so stunned by her question- and struggling to hide it- Molly would have cheered internally for managing to throw him._

_It sucked that it was over something so dark and depressing as drug use instead of secretly outing him for watching an episode of _Maury_._

_His mouth dropped a fraction, highly disconcerted, and she could understand why. Maybe. The drugs had made him weak and more people saw then he could ever forget- delete as he might try. Sherlock Holmes was anything but weak, and it rankled something fierce that he had even the scent of such a stigma about him. _

_He was supposed to be above such common afflictions. _

_Biting her lip, she darted another harried glance toward the doors. "Scott deals heroin primarily. You did not buy from him did you?" Oh, God, just say no!_

_At this, Sherlock suddenly looked absolutely murderous. "How do you know what Saunders 'primarily deals' in? How do you know any of this?"_

_What, did she look like she was raised in a bubble? Tilting her chin, she leveled him with as calm and unflappable a look as she could managed given she was trembling from fever. "You answer mine, I'll answer yours." She bargained and he fairly growled at her._

"_No, I never bought from Saunders. Heroin was never my cup of tea. I don't need to see anything other than reality." He ground out snidely, eyes blazing in anger and Molly felt something deep within her unclench. That is until her mind finally processed that last bit. _

_Could she honestly consider it a good thing that he chose the drug that was like high octane to the brain? _

_Sighing like she had just run a marathon- a vomit marathon- Molly fairly doubled over the armrest and groaned in relief, deciding to count her blessings._

"_How do you know Scott Saunders?" He bit out, angry, bringing the conversation back around._

_She hummed for a second longer, before tiredly picking her head up and meeting his inquiry head on, like she had promised. "We grew up together. He was my brother's best friend." She watched in rapt fascination as something in Sherlock's face eased at her pronouncement._

"_You have a brother." His brow crinkled in thought, his enormous brain apparently flipping through his files to see if he missed something._

"_I had a brother." She corrected gently, and he cocked his head, listening intently, eyes doing that x-ray thing of his. "He died when I was a teenager after overdosing on heroin."_

_He was openly staring at her and Molly hoped some of this was reaching him; reverberating with that user part of him that was still riddled with want for a drug that buzzed the mind- because all addicts had that want. It never went away._

_The victors just managed to bury it under more important, stimulating things like family, hobbies, love, or in Sherlock's case, work. _

"_Scott Saunders…was in the next room as Mark started to seize. Whether he knew what was happening or not, I don't know." She paused, trying to gather her thoughts. "It's messed up hearing that Scott is now a dealer. Of the same drug that killed his best friend in such a useless and senseless fashion no less."_

_Sherlock shifted subtly. "He runs the London supply- he's a king fish in the market for heroin and meth."_

_Molly bit her lip, nodding along though she had not known that he so successful at what he did. "He was always smart. But then again, so was my brother. The difference was that Mark eventually succumb to his addiction, and Scott used his to fuel a booming business by the sound of it." One that nearly cost her the life of her dear DI. It was a thought that rotted in her mind- she couldn't let it go. She'd been down that road once and it had been awful, if not entirely unexpected. She wouldn't do it again_

_She refused._

"_You have to promise me something, Sherlock." She said swiftly, hand shooting out to grab his arm. "And this is going to sound incredibly messed up, but you have to promise me that you will never- that you won't-" She stumbled, trying to find the words. "You're clean now, but I know about how the temptation never goes away." She tried again and ground her teeth, frustrated. _

"_Never go to Saunders. I would not be able to handle it if he took another person from me." It was jumbled and poorly worded, but Sherlock seemed to get what she was asking as he stiffened into wood under her fingers. _

_Death could not have Sherlock- it nearly took Lestrade- and already had her brother. She wasn't allowing it anyone else for a good long while._

_Sherlock looked highly offended but she just tightened her grip on him. "Promise me!" She begged._

"_Oh, for the love of- fine! I promise!" He spat acidly at her and she sighed, relieved. _

_He could be mad all he wanted- she had his promise and that's what mattered. "Thank you." _

_He ripped his arm from her grasp and stood to his feet, glaring down at her. Oh, sweet Jesus, here it comes…_

_He was going to flambé her. She could see it in the very line of his shoulders and jaw._

_Whatever he had been about to blast her with- and maybe she did deserve it…maybe- was interrupted as the ER doors opened once more, flooding the lobby with relieved members of Serious Crimes. _

_Where once tight expressions of worry stifled and curbed the chatter of so many was now replaced by muted banter that wasn't lacking in warmth. As the group kidded and joked their way out to the parking lot, only Craig stopped upon seeing them still encamped in the lobby. "Go on back. He's awake and talking to Sally- keep your distance though, she's likely to charge if threatened." He waved; face splitting into a reassured grin before clapping a buddy on the shoulder and ducking out the doors._

_Molly shot to her feet- ignored the light headedness- and snatched Sherlock's elbow and tugged. "Let's go see him."_

_His face was frigid and arm inflexible, but he walked with her._

_Twice in one setting- or general area- had she ticked him off by being pushy and opinionated about Sherlock sensitive things._

_It had to be a record of some sort._

_Together- and rather unwillingly- they strolled into the inner sanctum of the ER which despite all the television shows she had ever seen on these sorts of places, was remarkably calm- almost deserted if it weren't for the distant sounds of people working._

_There was a second set of doors that a nurse behind a glass practitioner had to press a button to let them in after she asked for their names and who they were there to see. Fresh instructions and a surging desire to see Lestrade- and praying no one had noticed the little virus carrier in their midst- Molly and her sullen companion found the right room, with the right Detective Inspector alive and awake on the bed._

_Molly sagged hard into Sherlock as the lingering worry ebbed away._

"_Must you do that?" He hissed down at her, but she ignored him. Lestrade was okay! He really was okay! Sally was perched in the lone chair in the room and looked like nothing short of the Jaws of Life was going to pry her from it. At their entry, Lestrade had rolled his head toward them and blinked in surprise with clear eyes. _

_Thank. God._

"_How are you feeling?" She called to him, clinging harder to Sherlock who had attempted to escape her- you're going nowhere, pal. _

"_Fine. A little woozy, but no pain as I am as high as a kite right now." His eyes flittered up to Sherlock and he grinned. See, Sherlock, people are happy to see you despite your dedicated efforts- she was ignoring the part where Lestrade was heavily sedated with pain meds. _

"_Inspector." Sherlock greeted as if they were complete strangers and Molly sighed._

_The DI was watching Sherlock steadily, but when he spoke it was to her. "Sally here tells me you know Scott Saunders, Molly."_

_Of course Donovan did. "We grew up together." She said quietly. Something in her rebelled hard at the thought of a childhood presence hurting someone as important as her DI…or even indirectly Sherlock. "I haven't seen him since I was eighteen." She could rattle off the date and time too, but that wasn't anyone else's business but hers._

_And now partly Sherlock's apparently. She leaned a little harder into him, suddenly tired- and completely disregarded Sally's narrowed eyes._

_Lestrade had seemed surprised by this news, along with Sally- thoughtless woman. "Is there anything you can tell us that might help bring him in?" He said carefully, hand coming up to rest over the visible bandages on his chest._

_Clever move, Inspector._

"_He used to really like Ren and Stimpy." Molly shrugged a shoulder, wincing as her muscles and joints protested the move. "I honestly didn't even know he was still…alive actually."_

_The conversation was at the tanking point- Sally was curling to pounce, and Molly wasn't so sure she could take her- she knew she couldn't…things weren't stringing along like they should in her mind. Sherlock was too bitter to even want to talk and Lestrade didn't look up to playing peace keeper- it was time to bounce. A nurse backing into the small room was her savior this time, as she and Sherlock had to step back out- how the hell did some seven Serious Crimes members do this- to allow her in._

_Sherlock was an opportunist, and didn't give her the chance to loiter- he just pulled her back along behind him as he made for the ER doors in such an earnest bid for freedom- he'd probably been just waiting for any excuse all night._

_She didn't protest this- she was too woozy. "What did you give me?" She asked him as they paused briefly to allow the nurse to press the door button._

"_Something to knock you out." Well that sounded like the last words a girl wanted to hear._

"_Like a rapist." She sighed, hand adjusting her grip on his forearm._

_Sherlock stopped and stared down at her "What? No, nevermind."_

_The lobby was dead- no one loitering for news on loved ones anymore- and Sherlock ushered her along to the automatic front doors. "My, this stuff was potent." She told him, before blinking at the city street. "How did we get here so fast?"_

"_It's Nyquil." He mentioned with a sigh. "Your fever is getting worse, and why aren't you wearing a better coat?"_

_She made a noise in the back of her throat. "Mmm…because of the rain." Which it wasn't doing right now. Craning her head back up to see the strip of night sky that flowed between the buildings overhead, Molly was just able to make out a star or three. _

"_You have an umbrella for that- why am I even having this conversation?" He grumbled to himself as he summoned a taxi from his personal store that trailed him everywhere._

"_Oh, I hope I don't have to hurl." Molly muttered as Sherlock stuffed her into the back seat and the cabbie threw them both a panicked look in the review mirror._

"_You're not going to throw up- Drive!" Sherlock scowled as he slid in and shut the door behind them._

It had been a hectic night- or morning if she were up to splitting hairs for the sake of details, which Sherlock always insisted be the case- and she had been wrung out even before going to the hospital. She was lucky she hadn't gone horizontal at some critical juncture along the way because going to the Accident and Emergency and waiting for news on someone past those doors, that meant the world to her, ALWAYS sucked her dry of energy.

Being ill had not helped, and she spent the fifteen minute cab ride back to her flat drooping inelegantly against the door and window- she could see the driver furiously eyeballing her in his side mirror every thirty seconds or so- as Sherlock texted Lucifer or something for data purposes on who knew, or cared what.

The Nyquil had made her supremely spacey- she bet some serious cash on him having amped the dosage up, or mixed it with some other system represent just to shut her up- and took him opening the door on her side- and her nearly spilling onto the pavement- for her to realize she was on her street just outside her building.

She had been too tired to care at that point- and sick, she had been sick. She remembered pointing out to him that if he hadn't bothered to dope her up, he wouldn't have had to lug her home. She was an idiot, so she had referenced the LAST time he had to bring her swaying carcass in from the city like this and he simmered in irritation as he popped the door open using something other than her key.

As he all but carried her up the flight of stairs to her door- how he was as strong as he was considering he lived on the dew of a single Gingko leaf and the energy of the universe, she would never know- because she was moving 'like a damn sloth'.

They weren't exactly being quiet and as they crested the last stair, Molly decided that there had to be some sort of government conspiracy involved in messing up her life.

That or she was just a stupid moron- she wanted to point toward Queen and country, but it was kind of hard seeing as her mum had raised a practical, if a rather giant nitwit.

Joe was at her door.

He did not look pleased.

"_Can you teach me to do that?" She gripped the material of his coat tightly in her fingers as he hauled her up yet another three steps without her help._

"_You already know how to walk you dull creature." He uttered, eyes fixed on his goal a good seven steps above them._

_She sighed, burdened with his attitude. "No, to pick locks."_

_He shot her a look. "You would need this knowledge because?"_

"_You always have to pick things when I'm around because I forget my keys and whatnot. If I knew how, you wouldn't always have to do it."_

_His face wrinkled down at her, "Remember your keys and you won't have to have me pick your locks."_

"_But I have my keys, and you still didn't use them." She stated, head spinning very slowly to the right behind her eyes. "Can you teach me?"_

_He looked pained as he finally pulled her to stand on the landing, "We will see."_

_Oh, now he wants to be vague and mysterious. She sucked in a breath, prepared to argue her case all over again when he froze mid step and the grip he had her in turned to steel, large fingers digging in at her waist, holding her still._

"_Hey, Sherlock, what's the big-"_

"_Am I interrupting something?" The voice down the hall had her whipping her head around so fast it hurt. As dizzy and gross as she felt, she could not fight the smile that cracked her face at seeing Joe standing by her door._

"_Joe!" She chirped, happy. His dark gaze shifted from Sherlock to her and she slowly felt the smile melt off. _

"_Hello, Molly. Tara said you had gone home sick." He said blandly, eyes sinking to land on the hand at her waist. "But I can see you are in good hands already, so I'll just go, shall I?"_

_Oh shit. _

"_Joe-" She started and drunkenly stepped forward. _

"_Sorry to stop by and ruin your plans by waiting outside your door for the last hour because you were out on the town instead of being sick."_

_Oh, shit. Oh, shit!_

"_N-no. It's not like that. We had to go to the hospital because of Greg-" She tried, panicking, as she stepped away from a staunchly silent Sherlock- THANKFULLY._

"_I don't want to hear it, Molly. It's late. I'll talk to you later." And he made to shoulder past Sherlock, who only grunted before throwing in his two cents._

"_Perhaps if you listened instead of acting like a wounded martyr, she could explain the true nature of the situation." His smooth voice was devoid of all but his trademark haughtiness._

_And Joe snapped. "Where the fuck do you get off?" He snarled, and Molly squeaked at the volume of it- hadn't someone already asked this question once tonight? _

_Oh, this was a disaster!_

"_Joe, please- listen to me!" Her voice was pleading, tight. "I got a call from the Detective Sergeant that my friend Greg had been-"But he wasn't listening to her- either he. _

"_You need to back the hell up!" Joe glared at Sherlock, who was starting to grin because he was a git that loved confrontations. _

"_Or, you could just walk around. There is plenty of room in this spacious hallway for you to…manage."_

"_Sherlock! Stop baiting him! Joe, please, just let me explain-" Molly's voice broke as she strained to both make herself heard, and not disturb the neighbors. And while she had been speaking to her irritating consulting detective- to get him to ease off- it was her boyfriend that spun around on her._

_Joe was angry, and she flinched under his furious regard. "Baiting me! You can tell him to piss off, Molly. Get rid of him."_

_What? "Joe listen, I got a call-"_

"_Either get rid of him, or I go." Joe's teeth flashed and Molly felt a sinking horror in her gut at his continued refusal to listen to her. _

"_Oh, well there you go that sounds like a promise!" Sherlock said brightly to her before leveling his own look on Joe. "She's running a fever, little man. Calm down and let her explain."_

"_Sherlock!" She begged. "Stop it! Joe-"_

"_I said make him leave, or I will, Molly. I'm finished screwing around with this." His voice cracked like a whip and Molly started tremble. "I came all the way out here to check on my girlfriend- who didn't even bother to tell me she was sick- only to find she's not home, and is actually out cavorting around with some other guy who she already spends a suspicious amount of time around to begin with! I've been understanding and accepting of the fact that he's your best fucking friend, but this is something that even I cannot overlook!"_

"_Joe, would you give me a chance to explain?" She said, voice beseeching. "It's not like that! You are only seeing what you think is true-"_

"_What I THINK is true?!" He thundered. _

_Oh, crap._

"_What I think is true? Tell me, Molly, what do you think I think is true?"_

"_I messed that up- what I meant is that-"_

"_You're with me, but are also with him!" Joe exploded violently and Molly actually shrank back from him. _

"_Enough!" Sherlock barked, drawing Joe's attention back to him, giving her a moment's respite. "Molly, go on inside and lie down." He ordered, pointing to her door as if she could forget where she lived._

"_You-" Joe spat, but Sherlock cut him right off._

"_She's sick, you simpleton. She's been at the hospital all evening fretting over a mutual friend stupidly injured in line of duty, and while she's too polite to say anything I am not. We don't have any interest in listening to your flaccidly phrased sermons of injustice." Sherlock stated so calmly he could have been discussing the weather. "Grow up, or get out, but do not yell at her for your unfortunate timing."_

_Sherlock sure knew how to make a bad situation worse._

"_You've been a nuisance since the moment I stepped onto the scene." Joe growled. "You're jealousy over the fact that I have her has been a constant problem and I'm tired of dealing with it."_

"_Oh, well illuminate it for me then, Scooter." Sherlock offered magnanimously and Molly started pulling at her face. Oh, heavens no! "This should be riveting."_

"_God! Stop it!" She called, a familiar pressure building her gut._

"_You can't stand it! I see the way you lose your cool whenever I'm around! You can't handle not having complete control of her! She's not your damn maid!"_

"_Is that what you see?" Sherlock's baritone became oily, a word she would have never used in conjunction with his golden voice._

"_Oh, shut up! Shut up now!" She called unsteadily, inserting herself physically between them- a lot of good that did, she was too short to make a difference._

"_You use her! You use what she has to offer!" Joe laughed without humor and Molly closed her eyes. She didn't want to hear any of this. "Classic behavior of a chronic user! Of a drug addict. You're damn lucky that she bothered to pluck you up off the floor because she is too nice to let even the most pathetic of creatures die without at least trying. "_

_The words froze her heart as her stomach dropped and gurgled. How…_

_What a terrible thing…_

"_You're a terrible person! You yank her around emotionally, twisting her and that flipping morgue about with your creepy experiments that have nearly gotten her canned on six separate occasions because you can't stop pushing the threshold! You actively seek out ways to destroy her career and I'm not even sure it's not entirely unintentional! Now I see why the entirety of the yard calls you a sodding Freak! You aren't normal!" Joe's voice cut like knives and Molly staggered back from him._

_This was not happening. She was not listening to this. She could not handle this- _

_She doubled over and vomited._

* * *

FU joe.


	9. Chapter 9

AN- Let's do this.

_**** Italics are past bits of_ gold! Mistakes... two hundred shy of 24k, there's bound to be the occasional dent. Think of them as love pinches!

**How Lucky You Are**

By: Berouge

* * *

She had called Tara.

The situation had spiraled so quickly out of her hands, she knew she had desperately needed back up. If her sister had been a viable option- which she wasn't- she would have called her too- because big sis wasn't above a ritualistic gutting for the sake of family. Plus, she was one of the few people Molly personally knew that was probably sharp and inherently mean enough to go toe to toe with Sherlock Holmes and hold her own without immediately wanting to punch him in the lip- political presence in stressful situations and all that, the woman was continuously dealing with that little potbellied pig in North Korea on a regular basis, so one could safely assume she had the patience of a saint to draw on when dealing with tossers.

But big sis wasn't physically a feasible option being she was in Washington D.C., so she had just called Tara- a shaking, hysterical disaster that had messed all over herself while her boyfriend and best friend went to town on each other's egos.

And Tara had not been pleased.

One minute, Molly was barricaded in her bathroom- after Sherlock basically back kicked her front door in so she could dash madly through with cupped hands holding near translucent upchuck- sniffling and trying not to cry as she huddled close to the bog in her sopping sweat shirt and sick splattered jeans- and the next, Tara was there, shushing her in soft tones as if she might break from the sound of her voice alone.

Molly had never been so happy to see her.

"_I- I'm s-sorry…" She stammered wetly, eyes puffed as her stomach bubbled slowly, destined for a full boil in due time. "I di-didn't-"_

"_No, no, no, no." Tara soothed gently as she quickly wet a rag, and kneeled down to swab at her sweating face and forehead. Cleaning away any evidence of her not crying. "Stop that. It's fine."_

_Molly shuddered as her breath hitched jaggedly. "Th-they were figh- fighting." She started brokenly. "They w-wouldn't s-stop." She was really upset about this…that or the fever was enflaming an already sensitive area._

_Was there even a difference?_

_Tara just shook her head. "Wade's dealing with it."_

"_Oh…" Molly groaned with a hitched breath. "This is s-so so embarr-assing." And it was. Her friends were awakened by her garbled phone call and had drug themselves across the city, in the wee hours of the morning, on a work day, because of her problems and the problematic men in her life. She made a terrible adult._

"_You're sick, Molly. This cluster fuck wasn't your fault- it wasn't anyone's fault initially, but I am extremely tempted to kick Sherlock in the balls and Taser Joe for being huge pillocks just to make a point." The younger girl cooed consolingly. "Wade can keep them apart. He can navigate Joe's piss poor attitude and keep Sherlock from eviscerating him." Tara knew Sherlock- as well as anyone who actually disliked him but tolerated his presence because they had zip power- and if she was hinting at Sherlock's temperament leaning toward annihilation of a person, Molly should be concerned._

…_except she really wasn't. _

"_Joe s-said awful th-things to Sherlock…" Molly said faintly to her friend, very troubled by this, before dropping her forehead onto a trembling hand resting on the toilet seat._

_Tara made a noise. "He said awful things to you too by the sound of it." Molly slowly let her head roll from side to side, a lot less interested in that bit than she was the former bit. "He really stepped in it this time- especially when Sherlock told us about Greg. Oh, thank heavens that he is alright." _

_That was the understatement of the century. Had anything happened to Lestrade…_

_He was fine. Lestrade was going to be fine. He would be just dandy given the time to heal._

_Shivering, Molly held her tongue as Tara moved to twist the nozzle in the shower, filling the room with noise and movement as the water started to heat up behind the curtain. "What should I do?" The words were mumbled into her hand, stunted at once and all but flooded out in the cascading water but Tara caught them all the same. _

_The younger girl didn't hesitate as she reached for Molly's shirt hem and lifted it, forcing her to shift her position and extend her arms- she was too far gone at this point to give a toss about being self-conscious about herself now, and Tara obviously didn't care as she chucked the sodden article at the door behind her without looking. "If it were me," She said quietly as she helped tug Molly to her feet so she could shimmy out of her soiled jeans. "I would have to do some serious thinking."_

_Tara was chalk full of advice on relationships as she had been one of those girls that had started dating at an early age and needed the continuous presence of a boyfriend since before Molly realized that not having one was looked at as weird- hey, she hadn't went on a date until AFTER high school- so Tara had seen her share of battles, victories, and losses in the War of Love. She had experienced the cheaters, the liars, the good ones that got away…_

_She had working knowledge of the scuffles between friends going after the same prize and the slow erosion of friendships over time because of those guys. It was an ugly and unfortunate price people paid when navigating romantic waters._

_That's why Tara's response had Molly doubling over the toilet again as her body coiled and rolled out another heaving fit- she had NOTHING to throw up at this point. It was starting to hurt something fierce. "What do you mean?" She gasped out finally, body aching as she shook from the relief of having it over. _

_Tara pressed cool fingers to her forehead. "Just what I said. But don't worry about it now. Let's just focus on getting you clean."_

_Molly didn't argue as she fairly tumbled under the heated spray of the shower, turning her face to the deluge and hoping that somehow when she bothered to poke her head outside the bathroom door, the world would be as it should be._

_She didn't want to be angry. She didn't want to be irked at Sherlock for goading an already precarious situation along such a slippery slope as the one they all got to experience not more than an hour ago outside her front door. She didn't want to be muddling through the humiliation of having such a fight out where her neighbors could hear every consonant clipped through bared teeth, or how she left a rather terrifying pool of watery sick in front of Mrs. Tuttleridge's door- the old woman had a very opinionated ideal set on where women Molly's age should be in life and it wasn't working in a morgue or heading a lab._

_She was mad at him, at Sherlock- and he probably didn't care all that much because emotional work was something he was not up to putting hours into. She didn't know what she was going to do with him._

_But that did not compare to how livid she was at Joe._

_Oh, that man. He knew, he absolutely, positively, knew and UNDERSTOOD how she felt about people calling the stupid git a _Freak_. She ranted about it enough when Donovan or Anderson got on a tangent while disturbing the peace with their idiocy. Tara and Wade both knew this- Wade didn't like it either because he and Sherlock had some weird, easy respect between them which translated roughly into Wade lending bits of his own from Orthopedics to a giddy consulting detective and Molly didn't even know what boon Sherlock offered the affable, and latent bare knuckle boxer in return outside a fighting partner- she'd never even seen them really talk outside of head dips in acknowledgment. Theirs was a bromance best left uncharted._

_So Joe had no excuse. He knew how she felt, but he went and tossed that into the caustic mix anyway! For what? For what freaking reason did he think using that word would win him points with anyone? She hated it with a passion born from the abuse of its usage, and Sherlock probably didn't even bat an eye because insults of that nature just didn't work on him- if Joe had proceeded to hug him, then Sherlock would probably have detonated all over the walls making Joe the winner by forfeit. She was digressing…she was sick and mad and digressing from the problem because of how mad she was._

_She was blisteringly pissed if she wanted to put a finer point on it. _

_She was furious he had demanded that she send Sherlock away- she would never do that and like he would listen if she even tried._

_She was enraged that Joe had told her to 'get rid of him'- as if he meant so little to her that she would just chuck Sherlock out the back door with yesterday's trash._

_And she was beyond infuriated that Joe would accuse her of cheating on him with Sherlock. She didn't do that- it was wrong. And Sherlock still had the label 'cooties' under the word female in his mind because he was a fundamental man-child._

_He insulted her character, her morals, while pressuring her to choose between them- as if she could do such a thing! As if she could weigh the pros and cons and dump Sherlock because his cons were particularly glaring and the public frowned on such behaviors as unconscionable rudeness and blunt oversharing of OTHER people's business. The only thing Molly had to say about that was Sherlock didn't discriminate- he did it to everyone. The Queen herself would not be spared if he was ever given the chance- Molly knew this man. _

_She was so bloody mad she could hardly stand to think about how mad she was lest that make her even angrier. If she weren't struggling to maintain holding up her own body weight and curbing the urge to curl up in the tub and expire from how woozy she felt, she would doubtless have spent the last bit of the argument hurling everything in her bag at him. Either him. But mostly at Joe._

_She wasn't picky._

_Sherlock had stuck up for her, but she was under no delusion that he could have skipped over the discourteous parts of his 'white knighting'. His brand of chivalry probably should have stayed dead instead of him reanimating it into some mutated thing that agitates the situation as a whole._

_Regardless, Joe crossed the line- and it wasn't just about his Sherlock hating. _

_Though that certainly didn't win him any points with her. On the contrary…_

_It was the yelling bit while shooting holes through things that mattered to Molly without stopping to even listening to word she had to say._

_Or at least…that was what she was willingly choosing to focus on- the other stuff…the stuff he screamed at Sherlock about his drug usage and domineering personality…that was so far out in the red zone Molly couldn't even wrap her head around it._

_How the flipping, sodding, Hell did he know about any of it? The almost getting canned six times was before his time but Wade or Tara or even Bernard could have let that slip at some point. It wasn't a secret, but Molly tended not to start off meeting new people by letting them know about how many times she had been nearly fired here at the honorable St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Research Center. Plus it had been years since the last attempt anyone had tried getting her sacked and Sherlock evicted- what…two? Two and half years?_

_Anyhow, it was a long time ago and Sherlock had been left to his own devices so many times that she was seriously suspecting higher up intervention on his behalf. No way would just anyone allow a non-employee that much access to a sensitive area like the hospital morgue- no matter how much she felt her influence weighed in._

_Sherlock did push the threshold; he shoved at the standard, the accepted, and questioned the traditional without fail. He had a scientist's mind and a frightening lack of tolerated ethical behaviors- hence her suspicions about Sherlock having a powerful friendly somewhere along the way. The type of person that did what Sherlock did was not new to Molly- if more potent, more extreme. The almost getting fired trials were harrowing, but she took that risk anyway because Sherlock was so brilliantly unusual that the risk of allowing him a lead in her lab was well worth the hassle. She had been to medical school. She had met and had known geniuses before- Sherlock was something different. _

_Her choice. It had been her choice._

_But the pointed reference to picking Sherlock up off the floor? _

_Standing under the falling water, eyes closed, Molly could still see him. His deathly pale unseeing eyes cracked and redden with blown capillaries…she could remember the terror and the fear as she searched out a pulse, a sign of life. The horrible ride to the nearest hospital and realizing she knew nothing about him, but knew that if he died, she would break too._

_The panic of the unknown- something she had experienced a healthy dose of again earlier that night with Lestrade._

_And Joe flung that back in her face like it was nothing at all. Even if he had intended it for Sherlock, Joe had kicked open Pandora's Box._

_He crossed the line._

_A big one._

_Groaning- because there was a limit to how angry and sick a person could be before they started coming apart at the seams- Molly set about sluggishly shampooing and conditioning her hair, consciously working on not thinking about anything._

"_I have clothes for you, Molly, when you're done." Tara's voice called through the curtain and thrumming water, startling Molly- who had been floating in a tired trance for some time as the water messaged her shoulders and head._

"_M'kay." She croaked, hurrying to finish washing herself as the water was starting to cool._

_When she finally eased out from her little sauna cell, the chill from the rest of the bathroom hugged and danced over her skin, pricking her flesh with little bumps that made her shiver. She dried herself, body quaking from the fever and drafty room, before giving in to the need to be warm and yanked a pair of gray sweat pants on followed by a green sweat shirt. Snatching up the hair dryer, she jabbed the plug into the outlet and blasted herself with the heated jet of air- opening her shirt neckline and even the waistband of her pants to point the barrel of the appliance down._

_It helped, but she wanted to be warm. Cozy. _

_The couch still had her quilt on it- she didn't really want to go bed down in her room because there was no telly in there and she would need something to help distract her from her recent run in with life's favorite lesson of being unfair. Trembling, she opened the door and trundled weakly as fast as her jelly legs could carry her into her living room and to her sofa. It was dark aside from the kitchen where she could hear Tara muttering as she clanked what sounded like the kettle around, but Molly had enough light to navigate the sharp corners of her coffee table as she all but dove for the little nest she had aborted earlier in her desperation to get to the hospital._

"_Molly?" Tara craned her head around the corner, watching as Molly hurriedly wrapped herself up like a sausage and snuggled down in the soft comfort of her blankets, pillows, and home- hey, she spent a pretty penny selecting this piece of furniture for this specific purpose in mind. If she was going to be ill and emotionally miserable, she was going to be ill and emotionally miserable while being hugged in luxury. Humming a halfhearted response as she buried her still damp head under numerous soft pillows and her quilt, Molly reveled in the dark and the sinking heat. She was still cold, however._

"_Do you need anything?" She heard Tara's muffled voice and felt the dip in the sofa near where her legs were as her friend's weight settled._

_Molly grunted, already too muzzy to recall accurately what country she resided in as she slipped further and further away. Her last coherent memory was of Tara bedding down behind her ankles and calves without concern for Molly's sickness._

Tara was fearless.

She had no qualms about kipping right up next to a flu infested Molly- she had to admit, it was nice having someone to snuggle with as Joe wasn't one for cuddling despite how easy going he was- even though she was still sick as a dog the following day. Tara had taken one of her personal days from work, despite Molly's adamant protests against it- Tara didn't need to waste such precious commodities as days off just because Molly felt like the end was near and that somebody should put the priest on speed dial- and together they worked their way through the late morning trash like _Steve Wilkos, Jerry Springer_, and _Dr. Phil _before happily moving on to the engorged drama fest that was the _Lifetime_ movie network- Molly paid a small fortune to get these cruddy channels and it was _so worth it_. Especially on days like that one where getting off the couch was considered an extraordinary effort the likes of which inspirational books were written about. Tara made tea and tossed together a simple, yet highly impressive bit of culinary magic in the form of chicken noodle soup- that wasn't concentrate from a can, shockingly- which simmered slowly away on the cooker while she gently prodded Molly to eat some toast and drink her Gatorade and soda cocktail when she felt up to keeping her stomach contents firmly where she preferred them.

It was a relief to have someone looking out for her and she was inexorably grateful to Tara for being there as she heaved and wilted her way through the day. The last time this happened, it had been with Sherlock in the caretaker role and he more or less did the same thing…except cuddle and cook. Sherlock didn't cook- she was highly suspicious about him maybe being able to bake, however. She just hadn't been able to locate enough evidence to confront him and force and admission of guilt about his hidden talents.

He had nagged her about eating though.

Molly, for her part, felt awful- both physically and mentally. She kept replaying the terrible things that happened earlier that morning, radically fluctuating between upset, ridiculously angry, and queasy. She worried over how Lestrade was doing- she wasn't given the chance to say good bye last night…or tell him she was sick so she may not be back up for a while- she hoped Sherlock would remember there were other people in the United Kingdom and go see him. She fretted over Sherlock- even though she was annoyed with his prickish antics- because of the stuff Joe had said to him- going by what Tara had told her, the six foot tick was largely apathetic once Wade managed to lasso Joe into closer quarters.

She was still plain furious with Joe and didn't like thinking about him or what to do about him because it made her vomit in rage. Literally.

Tara had explained promptly what had happened while Molly had been out of the room singing the toilet seat blues and it was rather anticlimactic. By the time they had arrived, she was already hidden away retching her life into the bog while Joe and Sherlock were stuck in a purgatory like setting- Sherlock wouldn't let Joe pass to get to the bathroom- probably because he didn't like Joe and anything that would inhibit Joe reaching his goal, Sherlock would willingly do because he could- and Joe was just wary enough to not try to swing on the consulting detective. Wise of him really, because Sherlock was still an unknown variable- she knew Joe was aware of Sherlock's occupational hobby and anyone willing to dive head first and down deep into the criminal underbelly of London had to know a thing or two about fighting…or that's the idea she had gotten from Lestrade when he was despairing, once upon a time, about Sherlock running off alone without back up.

He had stopped bring it up after he'd watched her worry herself into knots about Sherlock being hurt with no one around to help.

An admitted fear. Just not to Sherlock- because he would plant douche bombs and be a horrendous _arse _about it.

So they had spent a good fifteen minutes in a standoff before backup rolled in and then Wade spent another laboring half hour navigating Joe's temper- the poor guy probably had to deal with snide comments from the Belstaff peanut gallery as well- and Sherlock's succinct rehashing of the morning's events. Tara threw them all out upon hearing about how gnarly Joe had been to a sick Molly- much to Sherlock's unrepressed glee, no doubt, as he loved being the trigger to public executions or doing them himself- and Sherlock wandered away on his own, much to Tara's irritation, sometime after Wade and Joe, as if confused as to why he had even been at Molly's in the first place.

So Joe was staying with Wade while Molly had Tara- probably best for all parties involved aside Wade, who had to trade his super gorgeous girlfriend for a bad tempered buddy with significantly more body hair.

Molly wilted on her sofa as she watched Tara make herself at home, still feeling bad about everything- Tara was adamant that it was alright, that aside from having to leave the house half put together and in trainers instead of heels, TRAINERS, she had no qualms about being right where she was. She should be so grateful her closest gal pal loved the drama- Molly would be no different…as long as it wasn't continuous. Thankfully, Wade and Tara danced their romance like a Venetian waltz as apposed the hokey pokey that Molly and Joe were doing.

It was embarrassing…

One would think two adults knew how to keep business like this close to the chest, but she had been desperate and Sherlock preferred to only be useful in crime solving and complaining about things…he was the other kind of person if there were two select types for situations like these…

One useful. The other…not so much.

The harmony- his own personal brand- in his personality really picked the worst moments to shine like the sun off polished steel.

When Molly had tried bringing up what she should plan to do, Tara had interrupted and told her to think on it a little more. What was there to think about? She and Joe were headed to war- she could not ignore the things he had said in the heat of their argument because they were things he obviously felt were affecting their relationship- things that_ he_ was blowing up into issues affecting their relationship, Molly didn't have these and it certainly didn't make them true just because he continually hit upon them. Was she being unkind to look at them that way? They were non-issues, but Joe's insecurities were certainly starting to lend credence to them if only that he would not stop hauling them before the Board time and time again.

_-"You need to think on everything, weigh everything, and not be instantly furious at anyone…give it more time."_

"_Maybe I've already done that."_

"_It's only been a few hours…fights like these are worth taking the intervals between bouts to sort out so you don't look back and see something until after the fact."_

"_What's the message under all that tact?"_

"_Think on everything- sleep on it a few days if you must because you're sick- but until you have, I'm not offering up one tidbit of insight."_

Molly wasn't stupid- maybe a bit on the airheaded side but she didn't really see this as a major flaw in her personality- and when she looked back on what caused the dissolution of her relationship with Joe, she could clearly see the smoking gun in Mycroft's hands- well…the kindling was always there in the form of his idiotic baby brother, but he basically stoked the fire to life that would eventually burn the foundation of her relationship with Joe. He made one phone call- a weird, complicated, and rather freaky phone call from an undisclosed location in another sodding country- to a pay phone not more than a jump, skip, and hop away from her and Joe. Using witchcraft inherent in all Holmeses that she knew, he hijacked a stranger's phone and then Joe's mobile just to dictate to her into going and fishing Sherlock out of the clink. Which she had done because choosing to ignore the problem would have enflamed Sherlock's chronic douchebaggery in such a way that he would keep it going strong for weeks as a form of protest- she would suffer in layman's terms.

Joe's first exposure to the pushy men that brushed in and out of her life- intimidating and powerful men at that, even if they only briefly made contact- had started the night at _Union Underground_…then freshly turned up at the crime scene of their first ruined date…and then Mycroft's little espionage stunt that had Sherlock rolling his eyes at the blatant showmanship.

The Holmes boys were vultures of a feather!

Sherlock was not one to be ignored and neither was his subtly ostentatious, oxymoron of an older brother who could be terribly polite while downright insulting the Hell out of someone- he had done it to her several times when they had been discussing shipping out Dubby's skull to Sherlock at Bexley Park. If she wasn't already neck deep with his brother, Molly might have felt bad, but alas, Sherlock had stomped the fragile tips of her feelings into tougher stock, the 'considerate' _arse_, by the time she had to tango with his older brother. Joe, however, had been blindsided with a particular brand of shenanigans that went beyond mere inconvenience and fairly dabbled in terrorism.

Joe had been intimidated, and he had not liked it.

One bit.

And if Mycroft had pulled the trigger, it had been she, herself, which slapped the loaded clip into the barrel.

Mycroft hadn't even spoken to him and Joe had been cowed by a man with enough power and expertise to hack a private phone line to speak to her on a random street and in a completely different country. And she had followed his request for the most part, regardless of the fact she was on a date- out of context, this looked exceedingly bad for her, but in context, Sherlock was an ogre when he had 'injustices' thrust upon him. She would not soon forget her punishing him for withholding information on her trail with Boris Little- which he STILL refused to enlighten her on.

She was damned if she did, and damned if didn't.

So who could blame the poor guy for recoiling at the caliber of this intrusion? His girlfriend jumped at the command of another man for a best friend that she already spent 'too much time with'- uh, no...The jumping at the command thing, not the hanging out with Sherlock thing because…well they did hang out a lot when she was at work.

Kind of hard to avoid the guy you were babysitting for the greater London populace.

That didn't excuse his actions one bit, but it had dulled the razor sharp edges of her temper just enough to not immediately go for the jugular.

She was going to wait, sieve through her feelings and figure out what to do- after she took counsel from Tara of course. She needed a fresh perspective from someone not directly involved and her circle of friends was hopelessly small- pretty much everyone that had been in her apartment that day actually.

Sometime in the midafternoon, she had fished her phone from off the coffee table for the first time since getting home and was startled to see the dozen or so text messages and phone calls from Joe- they had to have been from when she had went to the hospital because they ranged from sweet and Joe…to short and blunt, and no one had called her since she had been up. She didn't even touch the three voicemails- because she already knew how that story ended and didn't want to see the wreck before the incident itself blew shrapnel into her happy little world.

Sifting and cleaning out her voicemail in disgust- because she was just too angry at Joe to think clearly and the impulse of shooting off a few 'wanker' texts was ridiculously tempting. She could be immature. She wasn't above it.

The little white envelope icon on her phone screen still persisted her eliminating and she had huffed in irritation at the realization that she was going to have to root back through all the reminders of how Joe was mad at her and she him to find out what message she had missed.

To her surprise, it had been from Sherlock sent sometime late this morning.

She had been unsure what he had meant by it- because despite seeming like he floated around with half formed plans that he improvised and made up along the way- which he did on occasion- Sherlock never unintentionally did something outlandish. No, he was weird with a purpose; it was when he was being normal that her Spidey senses would tingle. He didn't do average very well, and it showed with his social blunders during human interaction, but hey, he was brilliant, not perfect.

Irked at Sherlock too- but not remotely shackled to the desire to be more mature than him because he was a giant toddler himself- Molly fired off several blank messages back at him. Hopefully they would aggravate him, the zit, during one of his intense thinking binges and throw his train of thought right off the tracks into a brambly ditch inhabited by thoughts equivalent to Anderson. Thinking a bit more about his Gitness, and Joe, and what happened, she sent one more text before snuggling back down into her nest because she was super tired still. Projectile vomiting like Old Faithful over the course of a twelve hour period would tucker anyone out.

'_Have Lestrade call me when you go see him today.'-MH_

_She was burrowing down between overstuffed pillows and the couch, seeking both warmth and cool fabric to ease her discomfort when her phone pinged for attention once, letting her know she had a text. Resurfacing, she eyeballed the black device unenthusiastically- what if it was Joe? She didn't think she was up for round two this soon. _

"_Don't answer that if it's Joe!" Came a sharp bark from down the hall in the bathroom where Tara had disappeared to, seeking a shower._

_Molly blinked at her friend, impressed she heard the alert before slinking the phone down across the table with the tips of her fingers until she could get a handful, and then blinked again in surprise._

'_I did that once today.'-SH_

_He really was something else._

'_Do it again. The man nearly died.'-MH_

_She felt the text was borderline bossy, but she was dying of the flu on top of being mad at him. He could deal with her sass just like she dealt with his- and his came with no excuse other than Sherlock had to share the cabs of London with absolute morons or something equally silly._

_He had actually told her this once when she asked him what crawled up his butt and died. _

'_No.'-SH_

_Toddler._

'_Tell him to call me.'-MH_

_She sent it out anyway, knowing he'd probably maintain his stance and turn hermit in his flat, doing lord knew what that drove his landlord bonkers- who was an absolute troll anyhow, so who cared- because his favored DI was going to be out of commission for a spell or two._

'_No.'-SH_

"_Who are you talking too?" Tara poked her wet head around the corner, glaring at the phone in Molly's hands as if the thing were capable of mass murder._

_Molly swallowed the bile that suddenly gurgled up her throat quickly- she was such a hot mess. "Sherlock."_

_The receptionist seemed to still in the doorway of the bathroom, eyes unreadable as she watched her sick friend type a reply before sighing loudly. "Right, we do need to talk."_

_Her tone was off, something Molly was not at all used to hearing from her. Figuring this was going to be rough and that she would need all her scattered wits about her, Molly set the device aside and smothered it with a pillow so she couldn't hear it chirp if Sherlock decided to reply- which he might, being as he was chatty today…if a consecutive line of impudent 'no's' could be considered talkative for him- Molly gave Tara her full attention as the shorter girl tucked herself in on the wing extension of the large white, wraparound monstrosity that dominated the front room. Tara shifted in agitation for a moment or two longer before sucking in a deep breath. _

"_Don't get mad, these questions aren't meant to be accusatory or finger pointing in anyway…but I need the facts straight, okay?"_

_Oh, boy… "Okay…" She cleared her voice, suddenly shy for no good reason. She had discussed all sorts of things with Tara- girl talk came with lowered boundaries and no topic was off limits- but where this uncertainty was coming from-_

"_Do you like Sherlock?"_

"_Yes." Molly said without hesitation and frowned at Tara's open gape. "What? You know this. He's like my best friend…unfortunately."_

_The younger girl seemed to sag. "Oh, Christ, no. I meant do you _like_ Sherlock? As in like like him?"_

_Like like? What were they fifteen again? Like like Sherlock- oh! "I meant I like him! Like I like Lestrade, or Wade." Molly rushed, face burning. "He's my friend- he's Sherlock! I like him! Like a friend! I like him like friend, damnit!" She stumbled around, tripping over her answers like a buffoon._

_Tara hummed at her. "Right. That answered that question-"_

"_Yes! I don't like him! I mean I do, but just as a friend!" Nicely played off, Hooper…_

"_Then who do you like?"_

_Molly glared at her. "Joe." She snipped petulantly, voice catching on the short name. Tara just raised an eyebrow at her. "What?!" She was mad at him still! She couldn't use her unhappy expression to judge anything!_

"_Then why aren't you having it out with him instead of Sherlock?"_

_Because she had been instructed not to. "Because you said not to. And I wasn't arguing with Sherlock about that-" She snapped her mouth shut, cutting off her sentence as a dawning horror deep down started to germinate- she was going to ignore it for that time being, however. Because she was a mature woman like that…_

"_And that is the reason you're going with?" Tara raised her brows at her as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. _

_What was that some sort of test? "You said not to! That I was too angry at him and that I should wait a few days."_

"_I said think about everything." Tara responded simply. _

_She was confused. "And I am?" The younger girl sucked in a huge breath and held it as she weighed her words, and Molly felt a dread starting to build somewhere in the dark, recesses of her mind. "Tara, being annoyed or angry with Sherlock is common place for me- it's not with Joe. Naturally I would be less inclined to pause before throwing punches at Sherl-"_

"_Therein dwells the biggest of your relationship problems, Molly. Sherlock." Tara barged calmly past Molly's rambling. "It's Sherlock this, and Sherlock that. You two appear close and I get it-"_

_Oh, hell, here it comes. "Not this again…" She groaned, swallowing another gush of bile._

"_Yes, this again." Tara snipped. "He's a man, single, who you are close too on a level that could easily be romantic if Sherlock were completely with his senses!"_

_Molly stared at her. "It's not like that, Tara. We are just friends-"_

"_There is no such thing as 'just friends' in a best friend situation between the opposite sexes, Molls. One side always sees the other as 'more'. Regardless of present attachment. Guys and girls who get along so well like that do so because they are compatible. It's natural, if not always sodding convenient."_

_Stung, Molly jutted her chin, ready to fight this tired, old accusation right into the ground. "Sherlock is just my friend, Tara." Though one wouldn't know that by the way his face crunched up in constipation whenever she said so._

_Git._

"_Then the 'vibe' everyone can feel is coming from him? Personally, I think it's subconscious and mutual. I wouldn't trust Sherlock to know what attachment was if I didn't see him get his knickers in a wad every time Greg's or your attention is pulled elsewhere during his 'me' time. He's insanely susceptible to jealously over the stupidest things." Tara gestured with a wave. "We won't even touch upon his possessiveness because what I saw last night was a man staking a claim- but it is Sherlock so we will allow for some mixed signaling because he is socially retarded." To put it mildly._

"_Look, this is an old argument. Sherlock is just a friend. I am not a cheater, and my irritation lies with Joe and his attitude toward…everything." Molly started heatedly as Tara shook her head at her. "It is! I'm dating Joe! I do not have feelings for Sherlock!" She had been fighting that battle for years and she felt like she had been winning. Yes, she could easily like Sherlock Holmes- but that would be a disaster if she did and she could see it a long way out. So she never let herself entertain those thoughts- ever. She knew this, and she still dated Joe. She wasn't that stupid and blind._

_She prayed._

"_People's feelings are rarely as honest as that. Liking someone but being with another is…well, it happens. It's when you act on those feelings while with someone else that it becomes inappropriate. You can't help how you feel, but you can certainly control what you do about it." She said soothingly as Molly took to keeping from throwing a mighty temper tantrum about the room…or vomit. _

_She was shaking. "Look, what are you trying to tell me? I know what people say, I do. But Sherlock and I are just. friends. He's been around for years and I adore him. Just as Greg is my friend and I adore him too. I love them, but I'm not harboring feelings like this for them- him!" _

_Tara sighed loudly. "Yeah, well, appearances can be misleading. If I didn't know better, I'd say you two were closer than 'just friends'._

"_But we are not-" Sherlock about resorts to spontaneous human combustion if people discuss feelings within touching distance. There was no tolerated threshold for him and 'closeness'. He despised the sentimental crockery, as he had called it on occasion._

"_But you are and that's what people see! And Sherlock certainly doesn't help float that 'just friends' boat of yours because he scares off or intimidates any man willing to ask you out! Look at Nicolas Hatcher! Look where you are with Joe!"_

"_Nic's a goon! He uses women!" Molly burst passionately. She'd watched him around campus after Sherlock said something! Nic was a bad example!_

"_Did Sherlock tell you that?" Tara asked and Molly felt her face flush. "See what I mean?"_

"_No, it's not the same. I just came back after- after I was- he was warning me!" She believed him. He wouldn't lie about that because what did he have to gain?_

_Unless…_

"_He doesn't want to share you- Joe is right in the regard that Sherlock steps where he should not. Joe is your boyfriend, yet it's Sherlock that bullheadedly claims the spot of leading man in your life!" Tara kept her tone even in the face of her harried protests- which was good, because Molly was gearing up for one hell of a fight and one of them needed to keep this conversation calm. "You accommodate him in your life to such an extent that some days I'd swear it was your fortieth anniversary of marriage. You take care of him because he doesn't remember that a body will starve if it doesn't eat. You make sure he goes home and sleeps and you keep ridiculous tabs on him when he is away with Greg as your accomplice. And it goes both ways- he about tore the lab apart the night Little hurt you-" He did? "-He refused to allow me to help you when he lugged your drunk butt home, and he has forced you to leave when work has become too much and you're barely functioning! You guys argue and bicker and laugh and it's so obvious that you care for him beyond a 'friend'."_

_Desperately, Molly tried to make reason shine from the mess Tara was handing her. "You have known Sherlock since he started coming down to the lab. You know he is territorial and bratty about everything. He doesn't like sharing Greg either yet I see no one saying 'oh, look, they must like each other because Greg makes him go home when he can't even stand without swaying.'"_

"_They do, it's just I know differently." Well that was unexpected. Watching Molly flail, Tara took pity. "Lots of the people that know of Greg and Sherlock's antics think they are together, but that's just from afar. The second they meet the DI, it's clear he's not batting for the same team. Sherlock isn't so cut and dry but I think it's because he doesn't give a rat's arse what people think and he's too comfortable with himself to go to the trouble of clueing them in on his preferences because he can't be bothered."_

"_You just made my point!" Molly jumped on it. "You said yourself that people assume Greg and Sherlock are an item so you can't push it on me that people assume the same thing about us-"_

"_I can because it's different." Tara shut her down. "He doesn't treat you the same way he does Greg. He's…not nicer- he's not nice at all- but he's…he's different. You wouldn't see it so there's no chance of you arguing the opposite, Molly."_

"_Must not be huge or I would have seen it." She muttered bitterly._

_Tara shrugged, not at all sorry. "That's because it is as subtle as white on white. I only noticed it after Wade and Greg pointed it out. Wade has gotten sharper about relationship junk since he started on the _Cosmo_ bible, and it really chaps my hide that he noticed first." She scowled as she voiced this thought, peeved her boyfriend out stripped her over something so juicy._

_Molly could feel the fight leaking from her limbs the more and more Tara set her observations on the table. They certainly explained a lot about why Joe never seemed content to just believe her- why everybody poked at them- well, her- about 'stuff going on' between them. She and Sherlock had a good dynamic going with their friendship but it was like a jewelry box- pretty…or, er….interesting at least, sturdy with a lot of amazing things in it, but no heart stone to solidify it being a true jewelry box. It was a fun packaged, but that was it…there was nothing more substantial- she was sure of it._

_Right?_

_After this little heart to heart with Tara, Molly was no longer so sure._

_If people continuously saw something, then there was a pretty damn good chance there was something worth seeing. _

_This scared her because how could they all see it, and she not? She didn't see romance between them- she thought of Joe in that role. _

_Not Sherlock._

_It's just…it was different from her perspective- from the inside looking out- where people saw intimate moments, it was more basic and life consuming. Go eat Sherlock. You're tired Sherlock. Why are you pouting? Does this look like a case of arsenic poisoning to you? When did you last sleep? Stop smoking those, they are slowly killing you. Be careful. Take care of yourself this time- She did care about him- that was something she wanted everyone to know, including him, because some people, like the jackass brigade at the Yard, felt Sherlock was incapable fostering the desire to care about him in another individual. So Molly went and ruined their predictions- because they were horrible to suggest such a thing to begin with. She cared if he was happy and healthy- a state easily achieved with the most gruesome of cases that had unforeseen twists that usually had her gagging- but that didn't mean she fantasized about him. Secretly, she did creep on him from time to time, but she did the same to Wade and Lestrade, who really were handsome. Sherlock wasn't traditionally good looking, but he had…there was something worth taking a second, and third peak at- she thought it was the intelligence coupled with his confidence that fairly smothered a room and the way he held himself when he walked that kept drawing her eyes…she was going to ignore the Shirt incident since she had been single at the time- moving on! _

_They were just fun to watch and look at! Guys did it! Sue her!_

"_It's not going to get better." Tara said honestly in a soft voice that floated into her thoughts, budging them out of the way with her statement. "Joe has made it clear that he can't trust Sherlock-"_

"_You mean he can't trust ME." Molly said brokenly, hurt by how true this was. "I'm not a cheater." She added, and that wound went deeper. It reflected poorly on her that anyone thought her capable of doing that- of messing around in matters of the heart. That wasn't her, and if Joe felt, even the slightest, that way about her, then the trust in her relationship was a farce. A big, damn lie held together by the thin tendrils of time and shear ignorance on her part, waiting to snap and break them._

_Maybe it already had._

"_It's an unfortunate position to be in." Tara said reluctantly, shifting in discomfort before her. _

_She was staring at her in a way that whispered of a keen understanding and sadness. Had this happened to Tara before? "What….what do I do?" It was a stupid question. She should be able to work this mystery out herself- she was old enough to not need personal instruction on such aspects of her life, but she was stumbling angry and blind as it was. Molly wanted to know exactly when this problem had become too unwieldy for her to manage by herself._

_Probably during the dick measuring contest outside her door some twelve hours prior…_

"_You have two choices." Tara said bluntly and paused, gauging her advice to see if it was worth spouting._

_Two? Okay let's hear them. So far, all Molly had in her arsenal was to cry for the evening- and try not to spew the meager contents of her gut all over the place- but as the silence stretched, Molly tilted her head with a confused look on her face. "Two choices you said?" She prodded with raised brows. C'mon Tara, don't leave her hanging!_

"_Get rid of Sherlock." The receptionist let the bomb drop and Molly felt like she had been slapped with a belt across the face._

"_No!" Molly snapped, horrified. "No! I'm not- how can you even suggest-" That was a terrible solution! Molly shrank away from Tara as if the very suggestion from the younger woman would somehow crawl onto her skin and blemish. She was not offloading Sherlock- she couldn't even wrap her mind around such a thing to begin with! And it's not like Sherlock would allow this- he fairly degenerated if she tried wiggling out of work early for God's sakes! "No, absolutely not!"_

_Tara clicked her tongue, countenance almost tepid as she titled her head to watch. "You have your answer."_

_What…? Molly froze. _

_What was the question exactly? And where was the other suggestion?_

_Tara's face unstiffened into something so sympathetic Molly felt like crying just by looking at her. "Joe will never let this go- he will never be at ease with Sherlock hanging around-"_

"_I'm not- this isn't a competition, Tara!" She wasn't picking people over each other just to appease someone else! She didn't stop seeing Joe when Sherlock had his fits and she would not allow Joe to cow her into cutting Sherlock out of her life- as if, the consulting detective wasn't scared away easily._

_Maybe if she were to snot on the Belstaff…no no…he'd just go all dark and glaring. _

_Why was she even entertaining thinking about this?_

"_Life isn't painted in black and white- Joe will not tolerate Sherlock's presence in your life to the extent that he is now and be happy about it. No matter what you say, or what the truth is- and I know the truth- you and that bratty detective have _chemistry_! A hard won chemistry and any guy dating you will always be threatened by it." Tara soldiered on. "I'm not saying you have to dump Joe- I wouldn't want you to if you truly like him, which you do. But these are the facts. Time may or may not make a difference and you are going to be facing this again because you won't push Sherlock away."_

_Molly felt sick- not the physical kind which she already was, but a kind of deep, throbbing wrongness that penetrated every wall she had in her mind and heart._

_Tara sighed. "Last night…when you found out about Greg…who did you talk too?"_

_She answered automatically in a weak voice, head fogged up. "Donovan. She called me."_

"_Who was the first person you called upon hearing this news?"_

_Molly closed her eyes. "Sherlock." The truth of that answer was a heavy weight pressing into her mind. Other than Lestrade, it was Sherlock that consumed her thoughts at the time._

"_Did you even think about calling Joe?"_

_She hadn't. She had been too worried about Lestrade, if Sherlock had been involved, and not vomiting. "No…"_

"_Tell me…is there a chance you could like Sherlock?" Tara dipped her head, catching Molly's sad brown ones with her solemn baby blues._

_Tara worded the question perfectly. It wasn't 'do you like', it was a 'could you like' question. The potential to want more from a man that did not know how to be kind just for the sake of kindness, the issue that was an apparent hitch in the cog works of her relationship. Did she like Sherlock? Well, yes. But romantically, could she like Sherlock?_

_It was a true bummer that she didn't have to give the inquiry more time to sort out._

"_I…I could…very easily if I let myself- and I haven't! I won't. I'm dating Joe." She said stubbornly. Liking Sherlock Holmes had always been a bad idea. For her, it was too easy to do and she didn't know why. He was mean, said terrible things, and was weird._

_He also was her best friend. Stranger things had happened. "I don't like Sherlock Holmes. I can't." She stated loudly._

_But even she could hear how her heart wasn't truly in it._

_Lord Almighty she was certifiably insane!_

_Tara moved slowly, unfurling from her spot and sliding in beside Molly, who felt like complete crap and a horrible human being. "You're a lovely person, Molly. You are loyal would never cheat, but there are just some things a person cannot get past. Joe might never accept Sherlock, and you won't ever offload him voluntarily." _

_The crux of her problems still remained, however._

_Joe didn't like Sherlock, wouldn't tolerate Sherlock, and Sherlock could care less and would dig harder if only to make Joe mad for 'shits and giggles'._

"_It sounds like it's already over. That we've decided this fate because some guy I know likes to pick apart thumbs in my lab and harasses my boyfriend." Molly mumbled, leaning harder into her friend. _

"_Give it time. If Joe can get over himself and his insecurities, then you have a fighting chance. You just…you need to be aware that there are more players on the court than just you two and that public perception will weigh in at some point too."_

Molly wasn't going to lie, or try and delude herself.

She was terrified.

She had acknowledged, for the first time, that she could easily like Sherlock Holmes to another human being while already in a relationship with another man- did that make her a cheater? Like a psychic, mental cheater who was with one person but could possibly allow herself to maybe be with someone else?

And she had admitted to a possibility! Publicly!

That was like setting it in stone- she could never take that awareness back, could never hide it or deny it henceforth.

Tara knew- and she had been remarkably supportive- and that was like admitting wrongs to Jesus Christ face to face. If Jesus liked to contend himself with watching _E! True Hollywood_ and obsessing over the dating lives of his close friends- then yes, she had admitted she could easily like Sherlock Bloody Holmes to the good Lord.

What a messed up comparison…

She was still scared.

The potential to royally screw herself was plentiful, and why on Earth would she do this to herself? She had Joe! He was into her, he liked her- why the sodding, flipping, fudging HELL would she even entertain her idiot best friend who couldn't even say something nice about her make-up or hair?

Was she completely stupid?

She didn't like him.

But she easily _could_.

What was wrong with her?

And they had discussed it- because she, in a last ditch effort to derail this nightmare, asked what her possible preferences toward the men in her life, that weren't Joe, had to do with her fight with Joe.

It had all made sense…while at the same time seemed ludicrous and random.

Molly wasn't bowing out- she wasn't going to let herself go down that road. She was going to continue to not like liking Sherlock Holmes, and have another go with Joe, while somehow keeping him from insisting she drive off her idiot best friend. That status quo was to not shift! She decreed it so!

Talk about blowing nothing into a whole lot of something.

It was stupid to compound a fight, which had more to do with Joe's shoddy attitude and how he threw terrible barbs around that hurt her in places he had no business going, and less to do with Sherlock himself outside of him actually being physically present and yelled at. Yet, somehow, a little confession had sprung forth and now she was being sucked into a panic pit or her own creation.

She didn't need this. She didn't want this.

So she brooded on her couch- finally getting over the barfing portion of her stay in Sickville- and thought of possible solutions to her problems while watching _Twilight_- the first one…it sucked, but it sucked in all the right places that she had secretly pushed it into a cherished B movie category with awful companions like _Phantom of the Opera_ staring Gerard Butler. These movies had been made to be hated and she loved them.

Plus, watching someone more awkward than herself on television soothed some insecurities of her own- Kristen Stewart finally had a decent purpose in life!

Tara had gone home- stating she would be back tomorrow- now that Molly wasn't completely helpless and prone to flipping potatoes into the bog at any given second. Alone, miserable, and still mad, Molly basked in the opportunity to sulk with abandon.

Joe was still a problem- one she was unsure how to broach and fix.

She wasn't about to call him- he wanked it up and she was not going to stamp on her pride and beg him. He hurt _her_. _He_ could call.

She wished she could talk to Lestrade, just to see how he was doing since Sherlock obviously did not make it back out to the hospital because of reasons he most likely fabricated to keep from doing just that. The DI would be great company- he was out of sorts like her, bed ridden, and quite possibly a good movie going buddy. He was fun at the pub during sporting events she neither cared about or followed- she just went for the shameless eye candy, beer, and good times.

Plus, he wasn't privy to her little drama fest and would be a refreshing change of pace. A worthy distraction.

The thing that stuck out most in her mind about the whole situation, many years down the road when she bothered to looked back, was how…absent Joe was- he hadn't called her, hadn't texted her. Hadn't reached out to her at all over the four days she was indisposed from work- Sherlock even noticed, not that he did anything different or unusual aside from text her about the future plans of a jar of pickled intestines in the large walk-in, which she did not respond too. He'd take them whether she acquiesced or not- apparently Bernard was still up in Glasgow so no one was keeping a close eye on the lab and morgue- and the six foot jerk that liked to press his five finger discount.

Whatever. Let someone else make Sherlock toe the line he never acknowledged ever existing in the first place.

Molly had also been doing her best to put some distance between her and Sherlock- as much as she could manage before he'd notice, which was actually easy enough to do. They weren't remotely attached at the hip and she would sometimes go a week and a half without talking at him as he sniffed out cases and invaded crack houses for whatever it was that he needed to solve the mystery. He was a one man Mystery Inc. service and if her fight with Joe had not concerned the consulting detective at all, she might have bothered to ask him about Joe's absenteeism- which he may or may not have had something douchy to share on, because one could never tell what Sherlock followed and cared to retain in any given situation or conversation. He had an overshare problem- other people's share-ables…not his own- and would no doubt create thought invoking reflections on life and her choices concerning Joe.

If she could get past the urge to hurl things at him or scream in frustration while he beat them over her head.

Asshat.

Alas, aside from Tara's companionship- who was more than enough, honestly- Molly was sailing solo on her Joe problem. It broached the question why she was even bothering to consider still dating him- he was losing points with his silence, and she had to physically keep herself from texting him to ask what the deal was with him. His absence was noticeable as well- Tara was slowly losing her temper with Wade's BFF, and so was her sister who called in from Washington D.C. to see what was up. Her mother hadn't been impressed with this turn of events concerning Molly's AWOL boyfriend either.

_-"He hasn't called?"_

"…_no."_

"_What a loser."_

"_MOTHER!"_

"_You want me to lie to you? If he can't get over himself, what makes you think you'll be able to help him man up?"_

"_He's just upset about-"_

"_Don't make excuses for him if he can't be bothered to give them to you himself. You are looking at a huge sign that clearly states 'I'm insecure', Molly."_

Her point was solid- if not entirely wanted because no girl wanted to have their parent point out flaws in their 'significant others'

So when the fifth day rolled around and she had felt good enough to return to her lab- the back log wasn't as horrifying as she had expected it to be- Molly had decided enough was enough.

She had set about checking on all the work she had missed- catalogued all the empty spaces that had magically sprung up in her large walk-in- and sorted paperwork and transfer slips into separate and distinct piles so she could figure out if ignoring them for a while longer would somehow inspire them to get up and do themselves. She hated paperwork- the only boon about the chore was that since there hadn't been any autopsies, there were no logs! Hooray for small blessings!

When Tara had stepped in at eight on the dot- for she abhorred arriving early, ever- Molly was waiting to confer before making her move- in case it was a stupid plan that she should abandon before launch.

She wasn't a dating guru- case in point, her boyfriend hadn't spoken to her in a week.

_Molly tapped her fingers in nervous agitation, waiting for Tara to push through the doors into reception. She was planning on calling Joe- to not be a horrible shrew at him, but get as close as possible to that title while still flying under a white flag._

_Eyeballing the clock, Molly was physically willing it to move faster because the sooner she had a confirmation on her kill- she meant phone call- the sooner she could move on to areas of other importance- like tracking down one of her many stashes to see if her emergency Kitkats were still safe from the sweet Nazi that routinely swept her lab for stowaways. Mike had complained that he was running out of mice and Sherlock loved testing things on them as an excuse to steal her stuff- she should be more incensed he was experimenting on living things as that was a huge marker for a serial killer in training than the waste of her candy, if only because that would mean Donovan was right, which would not be happening on her watch. _

_She was so messed up…_

_Shifting her weight, she scowled at the time piece again before dropping her eyes back on the doors. Where was she- ah! "Finally!" She crowed as a groggy, yet nicely assembled Tara came trudging through the doors precisely on the dot of eight and not a second sooner._

"_Why can't the world start moving at ten? Why does it have to start so early?" The receptionist moaned as rubbed gently at an eye, careful of her makeup. _

_Molly scrunched her nose. "Eight isn't early, dear."_

"_Maybe for Satan's minions it's not. I still need my beauty sleep. This-" She gestured to her face. "- is a sham! I needed twice the amount of foundation to cover up my bags! I need another five to six hours!"_

_At a loss, Molly shook her head. "You always look pretty."_

"_Oh, well, thank you." The younger girl sighed as she dumped her purse and shucked her jacket onto her chair. "Coffee?" She turned and asked._

_Coffee sounded good. Gave her time. Stalled…_

_Stalled…sorta._

_Well…sod it. "I'm gonna break up with Joe." She said it quickly before her mind caught up with her. "Oh..er…I mean confirm it. I'm going to confirm our break up. With Joe."_

_Tara whipped around so fast one of her earrings flew off and pinged against the far wall. "You're what?!" It was a mark of how unprepared the younger girl was for this news that she ignored the wardrobe malfunction of jewelry completely._

_Molly actually leaned back, startled. "I'm breaking up with Joe." She repeated, slower._

"_Is this because of Sherlock!?" She hissed, invading Molly's personal space, making her panic a little as she cast her eyes back toward the hallway that connected the morgue with the supplementary labs in the building that other busybodies frequented at times long before Tara strolled in the doors._

"_Shhh! The walls have ears!" She shushed Tara. "And no! It's not because of…it's not about that. It's about how I haven't spoken to him in five days. He hasn't called, or texted, or sent word through you or anyone else! Is he even staying at Wade's anymore?"_

_The shorter girl snatched Molly's arm and marched her down the hall toward the privacy of the lab. "Tell me what's going on?"_

_What was there left to tell? Joe obviously wasn't interested in continuing this relationship- or else he had been waiting for her to contact him first and apologize, which was not happening. She would not be calling to ask him to the movies._

_She would not beg._

_Maybe if they had been together for more than six months- or better yet, a few years. Maybe if she saw more mistakes or flaws on her side of the argument- and she had tried too on his behalf- and there were some things she probably could have handled better, but not enough to warrant his disappearing act. She had tried to look at their relationship from his perspective, but she could not get past some of the things he said coupled with the cold, silent shoulder he was giving her._

_She wasn't playing this game. She wasn't letting him have a free pass only because he was her boyfriend and she should consider his feelings in the matter. She didn't let her friends do this- Sherlock was too cantankerous to do cold shoulders though he did smolder in silences, but those were easy enough to break with a poke or a gushy liver- she wouldn't let him, Joe, do it. She had better things to do then manage another man's piss poor attitude._

_Sherlock was a man-child. Joe was supposed to be more mature, a normal adult! _

_She was hypocrite but what the Hell was wrong with wanting to date someone who could handle their baggage and issues with grace and open avenues for communication?_

_This wasn't primary school, where dirty, playground guerrilla tactics were deployed to isolate and destroy. _

_Besides, nobody should say the things he said. He had no idea the severity of the scar he had torn open with his barbs to Sherlock about his last overdose- she had nightmares that included days as far back as her brother. She wanted to blame the cold syrup she had poured down her throat, but if anything, it only assisted in sharpening the details of that horrible night over a year ago when she had pressed fingers to a cold neck and pled for a heartbeat._

_She took issue with it- all of it- because what kind of person uses an incident like that to maim in a heated hallway row? What kind of man had no trouble throwing around such terrible reminders without a care for the people directly involved- ESPECAILLY when one of them was his girlfriend who was already intimate familiar with drug mishaps, and the other, the man she nearly had die in her lap who happened to be a cherished friend? She had done her thinking- she had weighed the variables and the people and the situation and the feelings. She called in second and third councils in the form of her sister- who she could trust to give sound advice- she had asked her mother- who was biased in Sherlock's favor, and Molly let it slide because the git rarely had solid supporters. She had even managed to suck up her distaste and call Donovan to the get the number to his room and an update on Lestrade- who was still in the hospital after an infection took root in his lung, like she had feared it could- who she had chatted with a good hour about everything before he unintentionally broached the subject of Joe. She hadn't wanted to burden him with her problems, feeling like all she did was complain to him, but he completely bullied it out of here stating he was losing his mind and needed some drama to keep him on his toes._

_As if a friend's mini circus of a love life was a respectable proxy for solving brutal back street crimes in a huge city._

_Lestrade was the best._

_He was also highly interested in where Joe had gleaned information on Sherlock's overdose- something Molly had originally wanted to ask, but was unsure how to do so. She knew it was on record- the EMT's had to file paperwork because of the presence of drugs in the flat. Lestrade apparently kept all Sherlock related files under lock and key somewhere, or so she was guessing because the DI had immediately gone into retrospective mode._

_So she had arrived at her answer- as fairly as she could, given the other half of her relationship had yet to even phone her to see if she were still alive. If Joe wanted to hash things out during her call, then by all means, she would listen._

_Right before she pulled the trigger._

"_I need a man in my life that trust's me, Tara. I need that trust because I flat out refuse to spend my days reassuring him every time I interact with another Y chromosome. I won't ax my friends to make a boyfriend happy. I can't please Joe because he refuses to trust me." He also had no qualms about hurting her and leaving her to rot._

_What a dick._

_She was still mad._

_Tara pushed the double gray doors out of their way and immediately planted her down on a stool. "Are you sure about this? Are you sure this isn't about…you know…the Potential?"_

_That's what they had coded 'could like Sherlock Holmes', the Potential. _

_It was beyond mental that she even broached that…subject…in the lab. Christ, he probably had the place bugged- thank God for her avoidance procedures and Tara's willingness to go along with them._

"_It has nothing to do with that." Molly waved her hand before her face, as if pushing the suggestion away. "No, it goes back to him and I. He doesn't trust me. He didn't try and talk to me- he didn't even call to say, 'I'm mad still, Molly, but I'm willing to accept I said a few things that make me eligible for the Biggest Bastard of the Year award'."_

"_You're sure?" _

_Yes. God, yes she was sure it had nothing to do with…Sherlock…and the Potential._

_Sweet Jesus they should NOT be discussing that bit in the lab. It was like a direct link to the man himself. No. No._

_And NO! "It's about Joe. Joe and his actions. Joe and his callousness while shouting about loud enough for the folks in China to hear all of our dating difficulties." Molly wasn't sure what Tara knew concerning Sherlock's drug problems. She doubtlessly discerned Sherlock had done them…but Molly had never talked about the night he had overdosed…or his other episodes with anyone outside of Lestrade and Mycroft. People knew, Donovan and Anderson knew- those tools- and they hinted at these dark moments where Molly remembered begging minutes and seconds for a man she had adopted into her heart, but Lestrade, as tolerant of their scumbag schemes as he was, did not allow cruel conversations or jabs at Sherlock's drug collapses. _

_Enough so that mouthy Donovan didn't even push her luck when Sherlock was being particularly nasty- the one time in the waiting room at the hospital was actually the first time Molly had ever heard her hit on it so solidly and that was only because Lestrade was in surgery for being knifed in a lung. _

"_So you are prepared to terminate your relationship?" Tara asked slowly._

_Yes. "Have you spoken to Joe? Is he still staying with Wade?" She asked again._

_Tara shook her head. "He is still at Wades last I checked, but neither of them have talked to me on it specifically." She sounded bitter about it too. _

_Pursing her lips, Molly looked away. "So no word on him calling? No excuse given that you can tell me?"_

"_I'm sorry, Molly, but no."_

_Still his loss. "Alright, well I'm calling him then." She stood and blinked at Tara's gape._

"_What? Now?"_

_Yes now. "Yes now. I'm not waiting for this. I'm riding a wave of irritation, anger, and righteous indignation. I can't stop now! I might not have the courage later."_

"_You should never make a major relationship decision while angry!" The receptionist fairly stomped her foot. "Disaster's come from hotheadedness! It's in the Dating Rules"_

_Molly sighed. "I've had five days to stew on this. I've tried cooling my jets, controlling my breathing, and counting down from a thousand. I have looked at the angles and over analyzed every word spoken-" that she cared to recall. "-and have come to the conclusion without my 'partner' in this, that it's time to let it go. We haven't been dating that long and as much as I like Joe, I refuse to keep doing this. I refuse to be stuck in situations where he can't shut his mouth long enough for me to explain that I nearly lost a beloved friend to some loser drug dealer on the street and that's why I wasn't answering my phone or in my flat. If he can't handle a horrible occurrence like that without losing his marbles, then what am I going to do when a bigger, more serious issue comes along? I need a man, not a boy." She said, repeating what Bernard had told her months ago in this very lab. "Joe, I like him, but I won't carry him. I won't sacrifice people to keep him comfortable in his little world of control."_

_Tara seemed to sag. "I can't argue against that. Even Wade told him to pony up."_

"_So…I'm going to do this?" She meant to say it, not ask it, but Molly hated letting people down and in a way, she felt like that was exactly what she was doing to Tara, and by association, Wade. They were friends with Joe too. As stupid as it sounded, Molly didn't want to upset them with her decision to end it with Joe. _

_Well…check that it was over as he hadn't talked to her in five days. _

_It was over. She was tired of the strain that came with fighting- she had bigger, longer fights with both Lestrade and Sherlock- at the same time- and never had she felt this drained over them. She could dig her heels in and be mad at them until the Apocalypse. With Joe…she was just tired of it all. _

_Tara just sank down beside her. "That's your call, Molls. I won't stop you."_

_She had to know though. "Are you mad?" She asked her shoes._

"_No." Tara shook her head. "Maybe a little saddened that you two weren't able to find happiness with each other like I have with Wade, but that's it. You can't force this stuff."_

_Molly nodded._

"_It's gonna be fine. Joe will have Wade, Ben, Raph, and Will to catch him. You have Wade too. He isn't the sort to take sides and ruin a friendship."_

_That eased something in her. Molly may not be as close to Wade as she was Tara, but she still liked how fun and laidback he was. Plus, he was a great moral booster to take shopping._

_Tara had him well trained._

"_Okay. I need to make that call."_

Because a breakup phone call at eight in the morning mid work week was a perfect time to drop a mortar shell into his day- hey, there was no ideal time in her book. Granted…she never had to breakup with someone before.

Confirm breakup. Confirm.

Of course he didn't answer- so she left a message asking him to call her as she needed to talk to him. She wasn't about to send a 'we're over' text to him- but if he didn't bother answering his sodding phone, that was exactly what he would be getting, tackiness aside.

Going about her day was really frustrating too, because she obsessively checked her phone every ten minutes to see if he had called her- she called him again sometime in that time too. It was as bad as when they had first started talking and she hovered around the thing like a nervous ninny waiting for a response- how times had changed.

It was a right shame too because she really did like him…

And then, because her day wasn't already agitating enough with her phone all but chained to within five feet of her person, Sherlock came barreling through her double gray doors so hard, they bounced and slammed off the subway tile walls in a an almighty racket the scared the snot out of her. He was on a case- no, not for the Yard. Shockingly, people actually had the spheroids to approach this man for help- and he needed to examine something under the light of his microscope after all but shoving her work off the table because it was within 'his' three foot circumference that held his darling at the center.

Asshat.

Molly had never been so anxious to find and pocket her phone, less he start nagging her for it- because he wasn't above taking her calls and insulting the ever loving spit out of whoever was on the line.

That's how she figured her sister could probably take Sherlock on, as he had intercepted her call and spent some five minutes- this was like light years in Sherlock time- fighting her before Molly managed to steal her phone back. She was actually dreading the day those two would meet and square off to see who came out on top.

Within fifteen minutes of his arrival was how long it took for Sherlock to start his mobile pursuing, and that had been a terribly awkward conversation that she had just plain bailed on since the Potential chat with Tara was still freshly present, like Agent Orange, in the back of her mind, waiting to be used to burn her something fierce at the worst possible moment.

"_I need to use your phone." His request had been met by her hundreds of times before. Easy enough._

_Except Joe still hadn't called her, and she was not informing Sherlock about this-_

"_Phone, Molly. I haven't got all day for you to mull through and process that request." He clicked his fingers before holding his palm out flat._

_Sir, yes sir! Would you like her to lick your boots as well, sir? "What's wrong with your phone?" She cringed hard the second she said that because she knew-_

"_Too recognizable. You know this. Why must I repeat it?" He snapped, and Molly edged away from his temper._

_Looks like she wasn't the only one in a cheerful mood today… "I'm waiting for a call, actually."_

_This just seemed to piss him off. "Oh, well, by all means, do continue to not use it as you wait in vain for a call from-" At this, he looked up and squinted at her, probably downloading her secrets again and Molly rallied enough to glare back, attempting to hide whatever it was that always gave her way._

"_Shut it." She said lowly as he sucked in a breath to continue his deducing. _

_He almost let her go- because he normally just didn't care about the issues in her life unless they started encroaching on his life and prospects. She had them, and he ignored her having them or he bitched about everything. It's how they worked. Now if she just hadn't denied him his right to take and use HER phone upon command, she would have continued to remain unruffled by his inquisition. _

"_What's got you so pinched and wrinkly today?"_

_Oh, for the love of all- "Don't be mean." _

"_Boyfriend troubles again?" He barked over his microscope with another glittering steel blue glare. "My, God, you two are deplorable daters." Oh, well that's rich! When was the last time HE went on date?!_

_Had he ever?_

_FOCUS HOOPER!_

"_Thanks a bunch there, Sherlock." She grumped at him as she continued to edge toward the morgue. It was so obvious that she was trying to run that he actually rubbed at his forehead as if a deep seated pain had taken root between his eyes._

_Good! Suffer, gitwad!_

"_What ARE you doing?" He was starting to enunciate his words, denoting his thinning patience- that was already legendarily short on span as it was. _

_Marvelous._

"_I've gotta use the loo, Master. Please excuse me!" With that, she quickly scuttled out from under his snide regard for the ladies. Safely- if he bothered to adhere to the signs- entombed in her favored handicap stall- it had taken some two months to get over her Little aversion to the roomier cubicles, finally- Molly slumped down the wall to sit on the floor- secure in the knowledge that nobody but herself and sometimes Tara used this restroom habitually, as grieving families rarely stayed long enough to need a bog. Pulling her phone from her pocket, she stared at it for a half second before booting the dark screen to life and pulling up her contacts. _

_Pressing the phone to her ear, she listened to the rings for a long time before being kicked to voicemail again. _

_She didn't leave a message. _

"_Third time today…still no answer." She muttered to herself. _

_This was stupid. This was really stupid. _

_He was ignoring her. How mature was that? _

_Well…fine then. _

_Tapping her phone off the palm of her other hand, Molly debated several things- and cursed herself for allowing this to drag her whole day down. Yet she just couldn't assume things…she needed the closure because after the upset of this week she was finished._

_She was done with dating Joe._

_It was weird how sudden this feeling settled upon her, odd how she didn't feel more conflicted. It would have probably been a different ball game all together if Joe had actually talked to her, if they had fought it out, but he hadn't. She could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and soon, this self-imposed pressure would be off her shoulders._

_Sighing loudly, Molly pushed herself to her feet. She had one more avenue to extinguish before she allowed herself to forget the whole damn thing- which would be really hard because who does that? They were supposed to be in a relationship. She was pretty sure they were supposed to end either cordially, or violently explosive._

_Not just…stop. _

_Right?_

_Right._

_Possibly. She didn't know for sure._

_She needed more data. She needed to have facts so she didn't blunder- as far as she was concerned, nothing would salvage this sinking ship. She wanted the whole thing wrapped up and gone, not haphazardly splayed all over her days and emotions._

_If only she could get ahold of Joe so as to assuage some of these feelings._

_What a turd. _

_Dipping quickly from the lavatory, Molly booked it with intent down the hallway, past reception and a bewildered Tara, into the adjoining hall that opened her morgue and lab up to the rest of the hospital. Orthopedics was practically housed on Pluto as far as Molly was concerned- it was one the major draws left to St. Bart's that allowed the facility to still call itself a hospital- and was located in the new, flashier buildings- and it took a bit of work getting there. _

_Allowing her just enough time to purify her motivation for separation. _

_Wade was in his office, looking at x-rays of broken legs or something when Molly pushed into his cushy digs- lucky git, even his desk was new. Her desk looked like something the seventies savagely molested with gross wood paneling- and burn marks, but those were newer thanks to Sherlock and his Bunsen Burner phase. "Hey Wade." _

_She was nervous. As much as she liked Wade, she knew that Joe was his best friend, and that there was a strong possibility he'd hold a grudge on his buddy's behalf, which would hurt because Molly didn't want their friendship wrecked alongside the dead hull of her romance. The lumberjack was amiable and had the emotional variation of grass most of the time, but Molly wasn't going to make the mistake of holding him to that image._

_If he wanted to be mad at her, there was little she could do aside from cower behind Tara._

"_M-Molly!" He froze upon seeing her slink into his office._

_Oh, what's this? Hanging around with a highly perceptive bloodhound like Sherlock had been invaluable for learning about body language, because her six foot man-child ripped people end from end when he sensed weakness. She now knew what little tells helped flush out a nervous person and she narrowed her eyes at Wade but kept her voice friendly. "So…I'm just going ask it. Why hasn't Joe been taking my calls?"_

_If anything, he stiffened more. "What?" Shame that was as far as Molly could read into him as the consulting detective's methods weren't able to be absorbed just by exposure alone. _

"_I've tried calling three times today alone and no answer." She responded lightly, mind churning itself into a slow simmer. She was so done with this whole shebang the more she dwelled on it…_

_Wade's brow lowered over his eyes and Molly unexpectedly felt the hair on her neck stand up. "He hasn't accepted you calls?" He reiterated as if to make sure he understood her incredibly simple sentence and Molly was suddenly very unsure about the man before her. Illegal underground, bare knuckle fighters were probably really unpredictable. Plus, she'd never seen Wade lose his cool before, and did not relish the idea of being the one to push him over the brink on account of hurting his little buddy._

"_That's right." Her voice softened, wary of how he might react to her incorporeally assaulting his best friend forever. She liked Wade, but she wasn't about to assume anything of him. It wouldn't be fair to the guy._

"_That cock." He sighed suddenly. "That sodding cock."_

_She waited, still unwilling to acknowledge his name calling as a declaration of any sort. _

_He waved a hand to one of the cushy seats before his desk in invitation. "I'm sorry, Molly. He was staying with me up until yesterday."_

_Okay…_

"_He went back to Manchester. He went home. He said he'd call before he took off, but it looks like that did not happen."_

_What. A. Dick. "Well I guess that's as good of a confirmation as any." She slumped into the chair without further provocation on his part. _

_He shifted forward in his seat to lean across his desk toward her. "Confirmation?"_

"_That we are over. He didn't call me this whole week- I get he was angry, but he said…he said terrible things and implied worse about me. I'm willing to assume partial blame for some stuff, but I wasn't about to extend an invitation of peace first." She rubbed at the large scar on her hand, mind whirling over the past week and her decisions based upon how livid she had been. "Honestly, this is not how I thought things would end with him." Wade watched her for a second, his expression one of inner reflection before he hummed and looked down at the clutter of x-ray sheets on his desk, debating on something. "Look, I'm not asking for you to break his trust…I just…I just want a yes or no so I can get on with things." She added awkwardly, despising that she was mooching around Joe's friend for answers to her relationship instead of talking to Joe himself._

_Wade rubbed at his neck and just looked so incredibly guilty as he chose his words with care. "I would consider it over. The guy left. That would be a deal breaker for me if I were in your shoes." He said it so gently that the words barely smarted at first._

_Molly sighed, the low simmer on her temper starting to bubble just a bit more vigorously. "Jesus…" _

"_He's been a right wanker all week if you wanna know the truth of it. Couldn't seem to get past the whole Sherlock thing." He scratched at his head, a peeved expression of his own meeting hers._

"_Yeah, he kind of flung that in my face. Implied I was fooling around with…with Sherlock." Her voice lost some the intensity as she thought about it. "He wouldn't listen as I tried to explain..."_

"_He's an idiot." Wade's voice darkened as he looked down at her. "He'll regret it too, but as far as I'm concerned, he screwed himself. You'd never do that and Sherlock isn't the sort to poach another guy's girl." Even though his words touched her, Molly snorted bitterly. Sherlock probably didn't even know what a girl was…or what to do with one…"I am sorry, Molly. I'll punt him in the sack the next time I see him for you." Wade said in a serious voice, his dark blue eyes grave._

_She wanted to say 'yes, please do', but regarding him, Wade, who was stuck in a position no sane person would enjoy, Molly backed down. She liked Wade because he was an all-around nice guy. The same guy who didn't mind doing 'emasculating things' like holding feminine shopping, purses, and talking about what happened on _Ellen_ last week with almost inappropriate gusto for a man as rugged as him. Then his best mate and the good friend to his girlfriend basically break up in the most irritating way possible, and he is the unwilling monkey in the middle. Loyal to his best friend, but recoiling at hurting her. _

_If there ever was a prince in disguise…_

"_That's alright, Wade. He'll need a friend if he's hurt as badly as it seems." Enough to just never speak to her again? How was that for an overreaction! One would think he'd caught her messily making out with Sherlock instead of just being dragged, half doped on cough medicine, up the stairs to her apartment so she could barf some more._

_It pissed her off. _

_And she was still too damn nice._

By the time she was storming the hallway back down toward the morgue, Molly was sucking air to keep from throwing one mighty hissy fit. She said she was done, she was through, that she only wanted confirmation of their secession from 'couple' status, but not even seventy-two hours ago, she was still willing to keep their relationship on life support, believing they still had a chance to suture the wound and move forward. As angry as she had been, as hurt, and offended, she wouldn't have turned coat and run on him. Troubled times were nothing new, she could handle them.

She had apparently wanted this more than he had and that burned like a mother.

That was a sucky realization. They had started off so well, and ended with her holding out on stupid hope again. As she had done with every other loser she had dated.

It. sucked.

She wouldn't soon forget how bitter that breakup had been, how she cringed when she thought of how she 'screwed it up' when in reality, he 'gave it up'.

Her taste in men was worthless.

She had fairly stomped her way back to her lab, passing a curious Tara who followed her every move like an enraptured child, too sensible to poke a rousing dragon it seemed- she'd give Molly maybe ten minutes before she would be scenting for answers. Sherlock was still moored behind his microscope, chatting out loud to Aloysius, who did drunken twirls in his tank with much enthusiasm, as he sleuthed out his newest 'mystery'.

He probably wouldn't have even known she was back if she had not marched her way up to his shoulder and stood at attention, fairly breathing fire all over his person in her anger.

"_Can I help you?" He grunted, acting for the entire world that this was HIS lab as opposed to HERS, and that she was disrupting his concentration._

_She was surprised he couldn't hear her teeth grinding together. "You still need my phone?" Her strangled voice caught his attention as one steel blue eye slanted sharply in her direction. She didn't wait for him to answer because she knew, if given to his preference he'd rather use her mobile to shoot randomness off into the ether. "Here, take it, but on one condition."_

_He sighed loudly. "Yes, yes, I know-"_

"_If Joe calls, tell him to fuck off for me, would you?" She observed as Sherlock fairly poked an eye out on the eye piece as he reacted to the crude language- she didn't really swear like that, and never so raucously in front of him. Sherlock wasn't one for the filthy language as it required no thought whatsoever- which also encompassed 'thick' insults like her favorite 'wanker', 'tosser', 'asshat' and her special 'git'. He was more the clever and devastating individual and expected those around him to a least put in the effort, the boob. "And feel free to add your own two cents or truck load." To Sherlock's way of seeing the world, she was probably lucky that she didn't swing from tree branches._

_Git._

"_Will you do that for me?" She growled, watching his pale eyes- one watering now- intensify on her face._

_She was letting him off his lead, basically giving him permission to shoot holes into someone- which he was distressingly good at and she never condoned him doing- if Joe bothered to phone her back. She was praying he did. If he wanted to make Sherlock's presence in her life into something, she'd give it to him on a silver platter._

_For once, Sherlock's nasty side receded and he almost seemed truly delighted with her demands. "It would be my pleasure."_

The following week was tough in that she had all that anger and annoyance and confusion, and no one to funnel it all into. Joe never called; she was stuck with all this brilliant ammunition and no target.

Sadly.

She had been eager to watch Sherlock verbally lynch someone too- well he did, but not the person she had been hoping and Tom Greenely from a neighboring lab had been picking on her again for her ruddy luck at dating so she didn't feel one ounce of remorse for not calling Sherlock off his kill. Again, the geeky man worshiped the ground the nonexistent Princess Leia walked on. She was the last person _he_ should have been pointing fingers at.

It was nice having someone just as prickly as her around- they could ruin the world's good mood together, one bobble headed nitwit at a time.

Sherlock was increasingly caustic as the days ticked on- his case was super intense, or so she summarized by the concentration he pouring into it- but things weren't shaping up to end well for him. It looked like another failure was on the horizon and she couldn't help but be slightly comforted by this.

They could be pissed and miserable together. Yay.

Tara had gone sub nuclear- or so Wade whispered from the cracked space between his office door and the wall, as he had battened down the hatches for a full on hurricane of enraged feminine fury because Tara was the kind of back up that the Royal Marines would want in that she was always faithful- and had practically bitched Joe's name to Hell and back. This was the same girl who had basically instructed Molly to think carefully on what she wanted to do with her relationship with Joe- now she was just looking to light up Records with the intent to barbeque one best mate of her boyfriend.

Molly had a feelingly Joe had been black listed. If Joe hadn't gone and done a runner, Molly didn't think Tara would have been so capricious in her favor of him being put down.

Ben apparently copped it big time as well, something she had not expected really- because gingerly returned to work Lestrade had finally tracked down the leak to Sherlock's files and it had been Ben. Probably scoping out garbage for his idiot buddy to throw in Sherlock's face with the hope of sullying his already warped reputation in her eyes. Unfortunately for them, they had picked a target that was hard to wound by utilizing ballistic missiles and holy water, let alone some old news on his questionable behavior. Sherlock had just snorted without care- his reasoning was that he'd done drugs and it was on record. The facts were facts with him and trying to rile him up over them was pointlessly boring at best. At least make something up that was more interesting, he had told her. As if lying about how terrible he could be would help anyone! And like with what? Saying he sold infants into slavery, worshipped the Devil, and purposely crashed the computers at the DVLA precisely at three P.M. every day?

That last one she wouldn't put past him. Sherlock was a hacker of unquestionable skill, if exceedingly lazy about it- England should be thanking its lucky stars he found little personal appeal in the cyber art. He could do it, but there was no real thrill outside of time limits in cases or something odd and random to that nature.

It made a curious question as to what he did on the computer all day- because she was fairly certain he wasn't _Facebooking_ old 'friends' from school or watching _Youtube _videos of soldiers returning home and being greeted by their pets- those made her cry. She was willing to bet money on Sherlock spending far too much time on the weird side of _Youtube _anyway.

Where people poked holes into infected pustules and filmed it.

So while she dealt with her out of whack feelings of anger and bitterness, she had Sherlock throwing off impressive levels of wanker radiation that were deforming the lab's fungus cultures. Oh, and they fought.

A lot.

Well, more like bickered and snarled at each other- the snarling was on his side for the record- as they worked around the lab the few random days that Sherlock was actually in house. Otherwise, it was just her brooding as she chipped away at the back log, listened to questionable music on the radio at an 'intolerable level' according to Bernard, who had finally decided to return to home port and help out- she had left her sad day music at home in her CD player where she had her _Downstream_ on repeat just waiting for her at the end of the day- and ate Kitkats by the bag- Sherlock had taken one look at her consumption habits during that time and promptly started pointing out weight gain.

Because that was exactly what she wanted to hear.

_-"You are such a jerk. I am not gaining weight either!"_

"_Surely this doesn't come as a surprise. You've only consumed some two hundred individual chocolate wafers since Monday."_

"_Shut up, Sherlock."_

"_That totals up to some five pounds if you continue at this rate within the next week and a half-"_

"_Shut up, Sherlock!"_

"_You really can't afford-"_

"_JESUS, Sherlock! Stop it!"_

He was such a….Oooo he made her so mad sometimes she couldn't even…

She had no words.

So she took to ignoring him completely, the sod, for the rest of the week- and he was sporadic about it because he kept forgetting stuff, or so she assumed based on how he kept blasting through the doors, flipping out over something about his microscope, and flinging himself down the hall out through reception.

Why, oh why, did she think there was Potential where he was concerned?

It just proved that her taste in men was dubious at best. It also pointed toward the high possibility that she had inhaled chemicals right out of the test tubes as opposed to wafting them gently toward her, scrambling something vital.

She was such a hot mess.

Tara and Wade, in an effort to get her up and out of the lab- where she had taken to locking herself up at because going home didn't offer as much of a distraction from her thoughts as the work did and she had been spending 'obscene amounts of time' with the dead- weaseled her into an outing the last Saturday Market of the year.

She hadn't wanted to go. She and Joe had gone several times as she loved the trinkets, crafts, foods and oddities that drew crowds in all weather, and the place was full of memories of happier times with her now ex-boyfriend.

Who she had not spoken too since the night outside her door.

Oooo she still foamed at the mouth when she thought of the events of that night, day, week, weeks, of Joe in general.

What a goon.

Had she have not been so off balance, had she been thinking, she would have remembered Joe loved the Saturday Market as much as she did- they went whenever his stay in London encompassed the weekend day.

And that his full transition to London for work was supposed to take place at the end of November.

It was inevitable that they would meet again, and what better battle ground than their precious Saturday Market?

_It was cold and breezy, but it wasn't raining and the sun was making a valiant effort to shine- which was fantastic, because Molly had yet to replace the cow umbrella since the hardware store only had the Pokémon yellow ones in stock and she was not suffering that embarrassment without a constant influx of hard liquor into the veins._

_When had she become so bitter?_

"_Molly! Raph! Shoes!" Tara squawked in alarm as a booth was immediately targeted by the fashion conscious receptionist always on the lookout for her next footwear kill. "Shoes! Shoes now!" _

"_Onward, woman!" Raph commanded as they booked it across the sprawling walk covered in booths and tents._

_She watched Tara practically shove a group of girls her age out of the way- with Raph on the other side to shove them back if they intercepted his trajectory in anyway- as they made to lay siege upon the hapless proprietor who had heard her boisterous exclamations a hundred paces out. "Coming." She said, not even trying to pitch her voice to the determined woman's ears, already in a slightly better mood._

"_Isn't there food around here?" Wade asked as he took one look at the stall his girlfriend and buddy were plundering for 'cute bargains' and promptly decided he wasn't going to be joining them. _

"_I can smell food." Will was craning his head about, helping his friend hunt for their next meal that would most certainly be served on a stick. "But I can't see food."_

_A truly torturous act. "They are over by the river front." Molly directed hesitantly, dreading drawing Will's attention to herself purposefully. Will had been civil if not terribly friendly toward her. He was not pleased with the fact that two of his closest friends, Joe and Ben, were burned by associating with her in some capacity and was treating her more like a walking coat rack than a person he wanted to engage with. Raph, on the other hand, thought the whole breakup business- because of course they knew- was distracting from what was most important: sales and new finds- of which he and Tara were doing a fantastic job conquering at the moment. Wade had winced and sent her sympathetic looks throughout the morning as Will made a point to ignore her efforts to converse with the group at large- they had run into Will and Raph when they had arrived, so it was just natural the two groups merge as one to peruse the expansive market- but otherwise kept to herself or chatted shyly with Tara and Wade._

_Will twitched at the sound her voice and Wade hurriedly stepped in. "Let's move! Before Tara finds a bunch of rubbish she wants opinions on. She'll do the opposite of everything I have to say and it'll waste my life, but I can't say no. I need fuel to keep up that charade." He said rapidly, nudging Will in the shoulder. "Coming, Molls? I think they have deep friend Kitkats." _

_As if that would be enough to tempt her. She had Kitkats in her purse. "I'll pass. There's a stall over there I wanna check out quick before Tara notices I'm not with her." She tried really hard to not let his relieved drop of the shoulders affect her. She really did._

_It wasn't Wade's fault the majority of his friends hated her._

_Her pity party of one was really getting old._

_The wind kicked up, scattering leaves across the brick and pavement in a flurry of crinkling taps, and Molly ducked her nose into the collar of her jacket. Winter was cutting its teeth early this year. Shuffling a little bit fast to get to the tent that had drawn her eye earlier, Molly was unprepared for the sudden hit that came to her side._

"_Molly, I need your assistance!" Sherlock swooped out of nowhere, snaked an arm around her back and twisted them off in a completely different direction._

_Stunned at his appearance, Molly walked with him as if in a trance- or more or less was drug alongside him, since his legs were far longer than hers- as he babbled in her ear about something-_

"_-which has led to the necessity for a distraction plus a look out."_

_She blinked, starting to pull back. "Sorry, what?" She hadn't heard a word he had said._

_He huffed, arm tightening around her to keep her from wriggling away. "You haven't heard a word I've said, have you?"_

"_No." She sighed. "What's going on, Sherlock?"_

"_I need an assistant." He was excited- so much so, that he let her 'blunder' slide without comment- fidgeting like a school boy. "There's a case on!"_

_An assistant? She slanted a look up into his face and something in her softened at the brightness of his steel blue eyes and half smile lighting up and tempering the angles of his face. "Alright." She said quietly to him and was rewarded with a full on grin that had her sucking air. He really was something. The wind was tugging playfully at the curls of his dark brown hair, staining the paleness of his cheek bones with color that for whatever reason made the cool shade of his eyes pop even more. "Aren't you cold?" She asked after noticing the top button of his collar wasn't fastened, exposing his jugular and several inches of skin surrounding the column of his throat._

"_What?" He asked loudly, not paying her an ounce of attention, steel blues bouncing from vendor to vendor. "You need to look like you're shopping." He told her._

"_Well if you slow down, I can actually play the part better." He gave her an exasperated look and she felt the first inkling of a smile twitch the corners of her mouth. _

"_When we get there." He implored as they zigzagged down the main promenade, ducking behind booths into the next few isles of vendors and food carts, all the while he rattled off a whole bunch of nothing in to her- well it wasn't nothing per se…but she more or less listened to the round baritone of his voice and polished inflection rather than absorb anything he had to say. Molly nodded and hummed in the appropriate stop gaps- to show she was indeed, paying attention…at least to the casual observer. Or an oblivious Sherlock._

"_Right. Look busy but let me know if anyone comes back." They stopped, and Molly gazed about at all the stalls. How was she supposed to know if anyone were to come back? People were everywhere! _

"_Sure thing." She said anyway, titling her head back to meet his eyes, before frowning at the patches of windburn blushing the flesh of his neck and jaw. "Button your shirt, or you're going to catch a cold." _

"_What?" He was already strolling away into a nearby tent, not listening apparently._

_If she had done that to him, he would be in the middle of one spectacular fit right about now. Double standards weren't a problem on his home planet, Oddball. Feeling lost, Molly tagged along behind him, deciding to take a peek at what was inside- less she absolutely need a trinket in her life. _

_He was rummaging around behind the till- as if he had every right to be doing so- and Molly held in a wince. Sherlock was a bold bastard when he felt like being so. Giving up corralling him sometime two years ago, Molly let her eyes float about the tent, taking in the hundred bits of pottery and plants that seemed to make up the wares. While many of the ceramic shapes were interesting, most were too small to be of real use, and she quickly felt her interest wane, ignoring Sherlock who obnoxiously kicked the bin over in his search. Backing out, the flutter of fabric to her right snagged her attention. _

_Pretty drapes of shawls, scarves, and blankets in a tantalizing array of colors, textures, and combinations were enough, and Molly was soon picking and sorting her way through the collection, chatting pleasantly with the proprietress as she kept an eye on the tent Sherlock was raiding. She hoped no one would show up- where was the owner anyway? She probably should have been paying closer attention to what Sherlock had been on about for he might have included that pertinent information. _

_Oh well._

_There was a sale on- two for one- she had things to do!_

_She was debating between two scarves when her six foot companion emerged in a billow of overcoat and bluster. "Any luck?" She asked, not looking away from what she was doing._

"_Clean." He grunted, very much put out, fingers reaching out to touch the gorgeous satiny finish of a purple shawl- Sherlock had a thing for textures if the designed state of his flat was anything to go by. "It must be on his person." His voice trailed off as he sank his hands in amongst the material, petting it without conscious thought to what he was doing._

_She had no idea what 'it' he was referring too, and she was not about to ask. He had possibly explained it once, and she wasn't in the mood to be shat on anymore that week so she focused her attention back to her current issue. "Red or blue?" She asked him after it was clear he wasn't going to continue his verbal musings, holding up the two scarves she couldn't quite decide upon._

_He turned his head to look at her, and wrinkled his nose. "Case." As if she could forget._

"_You can multitask. I've seen you do it." She teeter tottered her hands with raised brows in encouragement. _

"_Neither." Neither? Glancing at the two in her hands, Molly frowned. "Red won't go with your coloring, and the blue is too masculine a pattern." He flicked his hand at her, turning to plunk an elbow up on a row of fabric bolts. "How can I get him to let me check his pockets?"_

_What? _

_Never mind. "I'll tackle him, while you do the mugging." She suggested seriously as she held the red scarf up against him and snickered as he did a double take. She liked the red one._

"_That's looking to not be a bad idea."_

_Oh, God. "News flash- not all of us mortals are tall, scarily strong, string beans with death wishes." She pointed out as she switched to the blue scarf. That one had some serious potential as well. _

"_The element of surprise would be in your favor." He reasoned and Molly shuddered, mind already riding through those scenarios and how she normally faired in fights._

_If he needed someone to cry in the corner she could do that._

"_It's my first day, Sherlock." She told him demurely, checking the red scarf once again against him. He did look damn fine in red. "That's a lot of responsibility for a newbie assistant." _

"_You adapt quick enough." He quirked a brow at what she was doing pressing the scarf into his shoulder, but didn't say anything surprisingly. _

_She flashed him a happy smile. It was rare he gave her compliments that weren't totally backhanded at best. "It's the physical bits. I'm very fragile." Cocking her head, she found that while the red was a divine choice for his coloring, it stood out too much. Sherlock skulked and snooped around people's business- whatever sort of business that may be at any given time, day or night- and the red would be hard to hide. She switched with the blue one and puckered her lips in thought. _

_The blue still had some serious prospective pros itself._

"_Not where it counts." He muttered, and she paused in her debating._

_Two compliments in the span of thirty seconds? Was he sick? Molly quickly reached up and pressed the knuckles of her hand into the chilled skin of his cheek. He was warm, but her fingers were practically the ambient temperature of the air surrounding them so that wasn't saying much about anything. At her cold touch, he flinched, wide eyes snapping to her. "Just checking something." He stared suspiciously and Molly had to fight the giggle that was working its way steadily up her throat. _

_When steel blues narrowed at her, the first bubble of mirth slipped past her lips, but died quickly when her gaze just happened to land past his shoulder, back out amongst the crowds and she spotted Joe._

_What the hell?!_

_She froze, mind wiping itself blank, and whatever expression- Panic? Alarm?- danced across her face, it was enough to have him craning his own head back around to see what put that expression there, and he stilled beside her as well._

_Molly felt like she had the wind knocked out of her. "I-is…is that…" Her voice was choked, and she felt a pressure building in her chest._

_What was Joe doing here?_

_Sherlock didn't say anything as he tracked the man in question- probably seeing more than she could ever hope to see._

"_W-what is h-he doing here?" She shifted her weight to hide a little further behind Sherlock and his voluminous coat, who turned to look at her but stopped himself at the last second. _

"_He appears to be on a date." The smooth baritone delivered the stinging news, and Molly barely managed to keep from straightening like a shot._

"_What!" She hissed, prowling low down the row of fabric bolts, trying to remain hidden. _

_Sherlock sighed. "Well, that blonde woman is certainly not a relative, and by the way she keeps brushing his arm and he keeps touching her lower back, I'd say it was fairly obvious." His face lost most of its irritated scrunched appearance as her stricken one flew back around to look at him. "What? It is obvious."_

_She couldn't breathe. _

_Her heart hurt._

"_Molly?"_

_They had just broken up- it had not even been two weeks! He had never spoken to her to really confirm anything, and she had just gone by Wade's insistence that she let it go._

_Yet here he was! On a date! With a stick thin, yellow haired woman who had better lips then herself!_

"_Molly?"_

_Oh, this…she didn't want to be seeing this! She didn't want to see him out and about, happy- knowing that he could be so while she mooched around her lab in a poor temper and uncombed hair. How the hell did she get the shaft in this relationship, yet he remain untouched? How was it that he was able to do this? To bounce back with such ease?_

_They had just broken up! Even a rebound seemed in cheap taste after how happy, if brief, they had been._

_Was she just not good enough?_

"_Molly!" Sherlock's fingers hooked her gently on the chin and pulled her attention back on him. "Breathe, Molly."_

"_We just broke up. What is he doing?" Even she could hear the wobble in her voice loud and clear. _

_Sherlock let his eyes skip back over to Joe. "Rebound. He is trying very hard."_

_Maybe if she wasn't struggling to force air down into her lungs, or had been hurting with a stitch in her heart much like the one that bloomed in her side when she ran somewhere, she would have zeroed in on Sherlock's curious use of dating lingo. Alas, she was fighting to keep from crying at the moment._

"_Was…was I not…" She swallowed as Sherlock's heavy regard clicked suddenly back on her, shying the words she could barely get out away without resistance. _

"_He's weak, Molly." He said like it should mean something to her. It should._

_She knew it should. "But-"_

"_He left you. He left. It's all on him and is piddle-y insecurities. Consider it a favor for your time." _

_Then why were there tears still stinging her eyes. "O-okay…"_

_She would have felt better if the blonde woman wasn't prettier than Molly was, curvier than Molly was. Was that the sort of woman he-_

"_Stop that, Molly." Fingers snapped boldly before her nose. "She's as big a moron as he! Look at her shoes."_

_She did. Prada, this season. Tara knew shoes like an artist knew color, but even Molly could see the price tags floating about the glorious footwear._

"_No! Not like that, you flakey female! She spent at least a thousand pounds on a pair of heels that don't even fit right! She's ashamed of wearing a size eleven, so she forces those pontoons of hers into nines in the hopes of appearing more feminine. All that consideration and it means nothing to anyone but herself, because I can guarantee it's completely wasted on Scooter there. That alone speaks of deep insecurities- ones that even you don't have!" _

_Molly, touched as she was that Sherlock was blowing holes into an image her traitorous mind kept fluffing up to help her hate herself as much as possible, still seemed stuck on the misery party bus. Turning her head back toward the 'stupid' couple, Molly curled the fingers of her hand into the soft cuddle fleece before her, emotions balanced precariously on the edge of total freak out._

"_Do you want me to go ruin his day?" Sherlock asked, and it took Molly a full five seconds to process what he was offering, and an amused snort had her rubbing at her nose. It must have been a mark on how pathetic she looked that he proposing going and actively being horrible to someone on purpose- Sherlock wasn't above being a bully, but it was rare that he did it out of the context of a case. She supposed it was a good thing he had his own line in the sand that he bothered to notice most of the time._

_She didn't immediately say no however, knowing that Sherlock did enjoy thrashing people around during social interaction normally. "Can I reserve the right to call you in?" He titled his head and looked back out across the spacious walk to Joe and his 'lady friend' who were cuddling- CUDDLING!- over a bunch of sunglasses. "God! He never wanted to snuggle with me like that! What the hell!?"_

"_As if he could be a bigger idiot." Sherlock said and Molly blinked, mind stalling out and turned to peep up at him. Did he realize how that sounded? "Are we going to stand here all day? I've got stuff to do."_

_She wanted to leave…she didn't want to watch her ex make kissy faces with his new flame._

_Ugh, this wasn't happening. "You…you can go…" She said turning around and slinking further into the material bolts and drapery of the booth, trying to hide until the nauseating sight went away. _

_Sherlock didn't say anything as she slipped up to the proprietress that had no doubt watched the entire spectacle unfold, and laid her scarves down the counter. _

"_Don't you worry, luv. The scoundrels that show themselves early are blessings in disguise." The older woman winked as she tendered Molly's money and moved to bag her items. "But just in case, there's a side exit behind the counter here." Wide eyed, Molly stuttered out a heartfelt thanks to the vendor who had no reason outside of compassion to help her out. "We women need to keep an eye out for each other." _

"_Thank you." She said again, twisting back around to see if Sherlock were still with her. He wasn't, not that she blamed him. He wasn't one to dilly dally when there was an interesting case afoot. Still she would have liked him to come with her._

_Oh, bugger! There was Joe and his honey boo boo just across the way! Hitting the deck, or near that, just so she wasn't seen, Molly looked around in panic before the proprietress cleared her throat. Oh! Right. "Thank you so much!" Molly whispered as she almost crawled on all fours to get around the counter. Slipping out the tiny back door, Molly side in relief at having a wall of sorts between her and Joe._

_Stupid tosser. She wished she could turn her feelings off when they became inconvenient like this._

_Taking a deep breath of chilly London air, Molly let the wind kiss goose flesh over her before she stuck a hand into her shopping to extract one of her little prizes. A pretty cream cashmere and lace scarf was well worth the poundage she forked out for it, and she twirled it artfully around her neck so it stuck out beautifully against her purple pea coat. Feeling a bit better already, Molly shook her bag with the weight of the second scarf, and groaned once she remembered Sherlock Batmaned off somewhere to continue detecting junk out for his case._

_That git better not get sick before she could give it to him._

_Turning, Molly ducked down the side of the stall to see where Joe was, and about shit her pants once she realized they were right slap dab in front of her! Clapping a hand over her mouth to keep the startled grunt from alerting him, Molly pressed hard into wall, trying for all she was worth to become one with the wood._

_Man, if she moved, he'd see her. _

_She didn't want to talk to him, but she doubted doing what she was currently doing would be any better if he were suddenly to turn and see her creeping around like Golem. Oh, God, what was she going to do?!_

"_Joe, aren't these beautiful?" OH and the chick was here too! _

_Well, crap!_

_How long could she stay in this position? She was starting to hyperventilate!_

_At that very moment, Sherlock came blasting out of the neighboring tent- he must have gone back to sniff around once more, which was odd- making Joe jump as the consulting detective came to an abrupt halt to keep from flattening the other man, coat making him look even bigger than he already was. A flicker of steel blue, and Molly knew he had noticed her predicament._

"_Ah! Well isn't this a real treat." Sherlock smirked, eyes cold as he stared down at the shorter man._

_Joe's back went up. "God, what are you?" His voice was low, probably trying to not draw the attention of his bird that Molly could hear chattering to the nice vendor through the wall at her back. _

"_Even someone as dim as yourself should be able to retain the basics." Sherlock locked his hands behind his back as he slowly started to circle Joe, who followed his moves, putting his back further to Molly. Sherlock was giving her a way out- or that's what she was going to choose to believe. "But I am curious as to the nature of your little outing, Joe."_

"_Shopping, not that it's any business of yours!" _

_Sherlock clicked his tongue, shaking his head in amusement. "Wrong, predictably. My business is based on knowing other people's business. Consulting Detective, little man, in case you are that half-witted." Twisting, he leaned to look around into the fabric booth and his brows lifted. "And you are, indeed, very much a half-wit."_

"_Fuck you." Joe growled. _

"_Hit a nerve, dear boy? You are trying very hard with this one." Sherlock straightened and Molly could suddenly see every ounce of privileged education and upbringing in his bearing as he haughtily stared down at Joe. "And why shouldn't you, since you failed so miserably in your last venture not more than eleven days prior."_

_How did he- forget it. She should be taking this golden opportunity to get away. Sherlock was being a sufficient distraction…_

_But watching him bait Joe for the slaughter was incredibly hard to turn her back on. _

"_Oh, did she tell you that?" Molly bristled at this. "Tell you that I messed this up? Well, here's some news for you, freak, it wasn't me that ruined our relationship."_

_Oooo…she was going to kick him in the balls! Molly had to press the hand over her mouth harder against her face so she didn't reveal herself. Unless she was planning a sneak attack of planting a swift kick to the goolies upon his person! _

"_Oh, do tell. This should be riveting to listen to you recite how your pathetic jealously and stupidity played into the termination of your plaguing presence in general. Really, I should be thanking you."_

_Sherlock certainly knew how to make a person feel like crap. _

"_That's rich, Sherlock. Really rich coming from you." Joe snapped. "The grown man that needs constant supervision and attention. If anyone is the fool in this situation, it's Molly for putting up with you!"_

_She was so kicking him in the testicles. _

_Sherlock snorted, highly amused. "Ah, yes. Blame her for your insecurities. Blame her for being the better person, for caring for other people's wellbeing beside yourself. Blame her for your blunders and shortcomings Joe; it'll make you feel that much more of a man."_

"_Shit, you are such a fucking bastard you freak-"_

"_At least he isn't a cowardly worm that can't return a phone call!" Molly barked, fed up with how he was tossing 'freak' around as if he had rights to do so- which he most certainly did not. Joe twisted his head around so fast, she actual heard the succession of pops. Good! She hopped they bunched up and cramped into a mother of hurt!_

_Joe darted his eyes back and forth between her and Sherlock, who effectively had him trapped in. They made a good team. Now if only she could get a good shot at his crotch with her shoe…_

"_Molly?" Joe said hoarsely._

"_Yes, it must be shocking to run into your former girlfriend of just last week while on a date with another woman." Sherlock crooned, enjoying watching Joe squirm._

_Joe turned to snarl at him, but Molly was quicker. "You are such a goon, Joe. I don't think I could have envisioned a more childish reaction to your temper tantrum if I tried." He opened his mouth but Molly darted forward, startling him into backing up further, before he remembered to stop short of Sherlock, who wasn't budging. "You have a right fit in front of my door, in the middle of the night, for the neighbors to hear! You rant and rave at me because you think I'm out screwing around with Sherlock while in reality I'm trying to keep my gut down at the hospital, while waiting for news on my dear friend Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade, who had been stabbed viciously in the lung while on duty. Then you decide, because I won't comply with your immature demands to dump a friend of mine because YOU are insecure-"_

"_Well, it's obvious that it isn't just friendship!" He spat and Molly channeled as much calm as she could from Ghandi himself before she lost it and tackled the jerk. _

"_You think so little of me? That I would do that to you? Well I didn't, and I wouldn't. Not that it matters now, since your ship down Shit River is already sailing merrily along!"_

"_You bend over backwards for him!" Joe jerked his head toward the man in question at his back. "There were three people in that relationship-"_

"_NO! No there was not!" Her voice thinned from the strain of not shrieking at him. "You dreamt that up! You made that an issue yourself without ever stopping to consider that maybe I'm a better person then that! So don't you dare lean on that argument for ammo, bucko!" God, how embarrassing was it to be having this out with Sherlock in ear shot since he- according to stupid Joe- was one of the reasons they broke up._

"_Yeah well, it doesn't matter now, Molly." Joe growled down at her, jabbing a sharp finger into her. "You go on and take that drug addict-"_

_She didn't slap him. She punched him._

_As hard as she could._

_Molly wasn't a wispy willow like the blonde woman- who she would bet big bucks never even looked at a Kitkat or spoon of ice cream- that was now gaping at them alongside the proprietress from around Sherlock's back- who also had a stunned look on his face- but at that moment she was glad she had a little more stock to put into her hit. Joe stumbled hard into the booth wall, shaking the structure. "That! That right there is why I am glad you are out of my life, Joseph! And heaven help me that I do not mope over you a second longer! How dare you! How. Dare. You!" She hissed at him, trembling in anger and pain. "A man that uses THAT to purposefully hurt someone is no man I want anything to ever do with! You're a pig!" At this Molly looked up at the horrified woman who he had brought with him. It didn't take much to catch her nervous attention. "You, take note of this! You can do so much better than a PIG and don't let him tell you otherwise!"_

_With that, Molly stepped primly over Joe's sprawled legs as he gather himself to stand, and barely paused as she passed the small throng of people behind Sherlock's imposing frame, only flittering a look up at her friend, who was staring at Joe as if he'd never seen someone hit by a girl before. Welcome to boot camp, pal!_

_She had to get out of there, she was done with the Saturday outing. Hitting the main drag, she picked up her pace, intent on leaving the market, and the back alley trash she found there, far behind._

_Her hand was killing her, but damn did if feel good. Talk about therapeutic._

_Looking down at it, she could already see the ugly bruise that was going to form under the swelling skin. The huge scare was starting to whiten and soon it would be like a beacon for curious eyeballs- considering the line stretched diagonally across the back of her hand toward her wrist and was meaty itself in places- which had taken a good few months to get over having people ask about. Whatever, she could wrap it._

_Problem solved._

_She was a respectable six blocks away by the time her temper and adrenaline started to cool. Stopping along the river front, Molly worked on her breathing- she refused to cry, she was not going to cry. She wasn't going to cry._

"_I do hope you aren't crying. That was the most entertainment I've had in three weeks." That deep timbre of his was such a treat to hear, because she didn't think he would have bothered to follow her seeing as there was still a case on._

"_I'm working on it." She said wetly, eyes blurred but drying in the stinging breeze as she looked out across the sparkling Thames. _

_He leaned up against the wall she was stationed at and set a travel cup of hot coffee near her ballooning hand. "You shouldn't hit someone with your thumb stuck out like that."_

_Amused, despite herself, she peaked at him under her wet lashes. "For a second, I thought you were going to say 'you shouldn't hit someone'."_

_He huffed in laughter, a cup of his own steaming close to his lips, "Please. You know me better than that."_

_Her hand was throbbing- she was such a baby- and she flexed it a bit before the ache intensified. "Do you think I broke anything?" She asked as she extended her hand to him. _

_She heard a deep hum before warm fingers were gently splaying her fingers open as he felt around- yeah, she worked in a hospital, but all the flesh and bone she encountered was already dead. Her medical knowledge seemed to sink into a black hole when it came to her own injuries most of the time. "Bruised bones no doubt. Probably a nasty sprain since you didn't snug your thumb up like this." He made a large fist with his hand, his big knuckles bulging as he demonstrated the proper placement of the thumb against the first two fingers for optimum punching effectiveness._

"_Sherlock, I better not hear about you engaging in brawls in the back passageways anytime soon." She said, noting exactly how big his knuckles were and the way the skin pulled over them- he had seen his share of fights judging by the size and the texturing of the flesh surrounding the bones. She had dealt with several bodies with hands and knuckles belonging prisoners and street walkers that had similar tells over the years as a forensic pathologist._

"_Says you who just knocked the office monkey for a loop." He rejoined, steel blue eyes twinkling. "That made my day."_

_She bit her lip as she rubbed her fingers over the plumping flesh of her sore hand. "I'm…I'm sorry about…what he said to you. He had no right…" Her voice wavered out, the words getting stuck on her tongue as she watched the boats out on the river bob in the choppy waves._

"_He's not wrong." Sherlock said bluntly and Molly made a scandalized noise in the back of her throat as she glared up at him. "I am a drug addict, Molly. Just because I've not been using-"_

"_You best not." She ground out, still holding strong her heated stare._

"_-doesn't change the facts of what I am, or what I've done, or what I may do in the future. The truth is the truth." He soldiered on despite her interjection, eyebrow arching at her annoyed expression. "What, should I collapse and start to sob the next time he says that? Might mean you'll actually need to apologize."_

"_He should not have said it. That won't ever change. And he called you a freak- I should have stomped him in the balls when I stepped over him." She curled her good hand around the hot cup at her side and pulled it toward her. "Talk about missed opportunities." She heard him sputter and she tried to swallow her smile. She was a bit bitter; more so than she'd like to admit to being, but hopefully she'd be able to pull herself together now that Joe had a black eye or fat lip. "Also, for the record between us, I didn't tell him. I've never said anything to anyone besides Greg and Mycroft-"_

"_Abort all further conversations with the latter. His slanted nepotism has been the bane of my existence for untold numbers of years." He stated pointedly, while sticking a finger in her face._

"_Pointing is rude." She reminded him absently. "He cares about you."_

"_His cherished pastime as an obtruder is vexing. He imposes himself without warrant or request."_

_Molly pursed her lips before responding. "My brother said things like that to me once upon a time. The only difference I see is that Mycroft was successful whereas I failed, but half of that credit goes to you." She said softly, tilting her head back to stare up at him. "You are a world stronger then my brother ever was." Sherlock was floundering, that much was obvious, and if their conversation had been over her winning an argument concerning who was the bigger bimbo on _Teen Mom_ as opposed to cocaine use, she might have been infinitely pleased with his reaction. "Which is one big, damn reason why I will never tolerate people saying anything against you in that regard. Where they see what you were, I see what you've overcome."_

_He fidgeted beside her like a child, squirming under her praise. "You have faith where you shouldn't."_

_She narrowed her eyes. "You best think before you do something stupid, then. I don't want to add misplaced faith to my already abysmal list of character flaws, which include, doormat, taste in men-"_

"_Telly and sweets." He added helpfully and she wrinkled her nose at him._

"_You leave the _Jersey Shore_ and Kitkats out of this." _

_He rolled his eyes. "You're so loyal." _

"_Absolutely." She took a sip of her coffee and was pleasantly surprised to find it was a calorie bomb of sugar and caramel. How did he know? "This is good."_

"_Should be. They dumped enough enamel rotting concoctions into it to cause instant tooth decay." He shifted his weight and crossed his arms so he could sip his drink and close his coat up against the cold wind. Which reminded her._

_Setting her cup down, Molly dug into her shopping bag and withdrew her other prize. "Sherlock." She said to him as he openly observed a shifty group of kids further down the walk messing around on skate boards. "Here. Put this on."_

_His pale eyes refocused on the bundle of blue in her hand. "I thought we agreed this scarf was too masculine for you." He told her without moving to reach for it._

_He had a weird way of saying things and thinking the group at large was in accordance with him. "Well, that's great, but it's not for me. It's for you." Steel blue eyes landed on her next and she instantly felt better about her choice to take the blue over the red. "I thought you'd look better in red, but you do a lot of boogeyman work and that color would be hard to hide in the middle of a break in." She explained, unfolding it to show him. "Plus, it's cold and I don't want you getting sick and sneezing on me."_

_His flat expression tickled her. "Right, and your vomiting on my shoes was an enjoyable experience."_

_She did what? "Oh…sweet Jesus…" She was never going to live that night down._

"_Indeed." He reached for the scarf in her hand, unfolding the dark blue fabric and rubbing it between his fingers, an odd look in his eye._

_He held it so long she was about to suggest to him that if he didn't like it, he didn't have to wear it- why she would have to was beyond her. If he didn't like something, he wasn't shy about making the whole city block aware in every possible way. _

_Except he pulled it straight and wrapped the thing around his neck, looping the ends through the hole he had made with the fold in the middle. Scooping up his coffee, he continued watching the kids further down the way and Molly felt a smile tug at her lips._

_She wondered if he remembered the case was still on or not._

In actuality, he had solved it by that point- after breaking several wheel thrown pots for whatever it was that he had been looking for. She knew he had told her multiple times at that point about what it was, but she had not bothered to retain it.

As long as he didn't know she wasn't listening, things were all good.

Well, they had been at the time. Life would get harder, disasters would strike and her friendship with Sherlock, the Potential she spent many weeks ignoring, were all going to test the three plus years of building they had been doing together. Sherlock wasn't an easy person to care for, to be friends with, or even like, but she felt that it was worth it when everything was boiled down.

There would be difficult days, sad days, happy ones too.

She would cry herself to sleep many more times, and curse his name to hell and back for hurting her with his douchebag commentary. But there would be joyful moments too- the things that made the struggle, and the pain, and the embarrassment so worthwhile.

He could create just as easily as destroy- and she was unsure if him knowing he could made things better or worse.

She might go to her grave never knowing what truly breached his shores, what stuck and mattered to him.

One thing was for sure, through everything, every upheaval, every case, every impromptu meal or snagged moments of peace he never seemed to have about him.

Sherlock Holmes always had that blue scarf about his neck, keeping the chills and cold of London's back streets at bay.

It gave her hope.

As long as he wore her color, it would always give her hope.

* * *

Good bye Joe dickwad! You will not be missed! What did you think?

**AN-** Alrighty then! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! To the kind readers who bother to stop and make it this far- to the fun folks I chat with and the guests I want to talk too, and the ghosts i know are lurking by, THANK YOU! I know that these chapters are long and I pray they are entertaining! I really do, because pushing these things through my selection process is a mother! This chapter took forever for the main reason of me not wanting to write it- because it had Joe stuff and he bores me, and because it's the gateway, the opening of the door to Sherlolly and I was horrified of screwing it up. We're diving in and it's all a down hill slide from here, and I stupidly, as I told some of you- ElixirBB- set a pace and I can't rush it now. My original timeline we would be well into the John bits- YES John is coming. I love him and he will be here- but now I'm some...trillion chapters behind? I dunno. I've shanked the original format. So buckle up- or not, for I cannot tell how fun these are since I pretty much hate every chapter I post immediately because I'm sick of looking at them and proofing them! LOL My love is fickle.

Sherlolly is on the way!


	10. Chapter 10

AN- I've been flinging this story all over the planet, having it polished up and fine tuned in part thanks to two LOVELY individuals who were kind enough to take this monster on: pruplup4 and Ybs

A round of applause for these two! And maybe a few shots as well! Cheers!

_**** Italics are past funnsies!_

Mistakes, they are mine. Let them love you.

**How Lucky You Are**

By: Berouge

She actually fractured a bone in her hand, much to her long suffering joy. The metacarpal of her thumb had been jarred so violently it nicked a chunk off the trapezium, all because she didn't snug her thumb like Poindexter had said.

After the fact, mind you.

However, it had been Wade that had called her on there actually being some real damage- because as an orthopedic surgeon, Wade could see a bulging bone a hundred paces out in a windstorm- or he had just noticed the impressive swelling and deduced the obvious. Her wrist looked like a balloon stuck in the leg of a pair of hosiery and it hurt like the blazes, so she wrapped it and worked around her lameness as best she could- she was NOT taking time off for a battered hand that she was most proud of. Ice packs and pain relievers were only doing so much and Molly just had to bite the bullet and continue on because it was her fault that she was even in that predicament to begin with.

Nobody forced her to smash her fist into Joe's face as hard as she possibly could.

She would have forked over a monetary reward if that had been the case.

"_Put you hand here." Wade said as he turned to flick a bunch of switches on the huge piece of technology about to blast her limb with x-rays. Grabbing a lead blanket, he situated it on her arm so as to not expose her unnecessarily to the rays of the machine- probably for the best…she was screwed up enough already without adding a genetic deformity incubated within her very flesh._

_Molly was quiet, meekly going along with everything Wade was having her do. He didn't have to help her- actually, she was stone cold shocked that he had offered. She had socked his best friend in the face at a busy market, after all. The bro-code, as she understood it, specifically stated that 'bro's came before ho's'- not that she was a 'ho', but the spirit of the idea translated well enough. Wade shouldn't even be speaking politely with her, and yet here he was, gently arranging her swollen hand and wrist so as to not hurt her needlessly. "Ready?" He asked and she nodded emphatically at him._

_He disappeared behind a lead screen and Molly continued to stand there as nothing happened. She sighed, feeling stressed because she didn't know what to say to him. She adored Wade- he was a wonderful man, who was fun and dependable. He was Tara's smitten boyfriend and there was no way she could avoid him, not that she really wanted that to be the case- she didn't want to let him go as a friend. Period._

_This was why a person should never date within their own friendship circles! She couldn't afford to lose the friends she had! Fortunately, Tara was too bossy to allow Wade's preferences, if he were so inclined to drop her, to influence the receptionist unduly. If that were an issue, she would have been a raving Kevin Costner fan at this juncture in her relationship. _

_Alas, Tara thought _Waterworld_ was a stupid movie and that alone gave Molly hope, not only for humanity, but her friendships as well. _

"_You're quiet today." Wade said as he lifted the lead blanket off her arm, startling her enough that she jerked her palm painfully. _

"_A-am I?" Her face tensed as she cradled her poor, abused hand to her like a worried parent. _

_Wade slanted a look at her and Molly dropped her eyes to his white coat, hoping to avoid the topic-_

"_I'm not mad at you Molly, so you can relax." _

_-of Joe._

"_You aren't?" Her head snapped up, and she cringed at how hopeful she must have appeared, because Wade's mouth quirked upward in amusement. _

"_No. Not at you." He gestured, with a large envelope that must have contained her x-rays, for her to precede him out of the small scan room. "Joe is like my brother, and like with all siblings, we can really be huge tossers to each other without fear of lasting repercussions."_

_Molly felt a twinge of jealously. Girls weren't remotely like that. "I'm just…I would totally understand if you wouldn't want to talk to me_ _because I hit him." _

_Wade snorted in laughter. "As sexist as this will sound, Joe was beaten up by a girl. You have handed me pure gold."_

_Molly gave him a flat look. "I'm glad my melodramas are so beneficial to you."_

"_Hey, he made the mistake, not you. Plus he showed up double dipping without ever telling you that it was indeed over. Even Raph wasn't impressed, and he could care less about what goes on behind the closed doors of other people's relationships."_

_Molly didn't really feel any better. "Well, honestly, Sherlock intercepted Joe for me and if Joe hadn't called him a _Freak_, I probably wouldn't have reacted so violently." Sherlock tended to bring out the extremes in her, because he was an antagonist that liked stirring up pandemonium. She also felt some deep rooted need to protect him despite knowing he could more than handle himself in any fight or altercation. Sherlock was like a man made of steel in that nothing seemed to penetrate his foot thick armor- an ego that big ought to supply some physical benefit- but she knew for a fact that Sherlock Holmes was not an island. That things did get to him- serious things…not how he wasted three minutes four days ago listening to Anderson explain powder burns to eyebrows or something. _

_Sherlock had let slip once, and only once, that he knew he was different, that he was, in essence, alone. Alluding, but never admitting, to how he suffered from the gift that made him so unique._

_She would never forget it._

_It was a conversation that locked a desire in her to see him happy soundly into place, and Heaven help anyone who tried to hurt him because of what made him so exceptional._

_Wade flicked the lights of his office on and waved her toward one of the squishy chairs before his desk. "Joe's been a royal ass. Now he has the distinct pleasure of being known for having a girl punch him out. He made his bed; he can lie in it. Now, let's get a look at what you did to yourself." He hit another small switch and a frosted, square bank light popped into existence before being covered by the x-rayed photo of her hand that he proceeded to jam up into the holding clip. Wade tapped a finger against his lips for only a second before nodding to himself. "Yup, as I suspected, girlie. You chipped your trapezium here-" He swirled his finger around the wrist bit under her thumb "- and there looks to be a hairline fracture on your thumb's metacarpal. You didn't tuck your thumb did you?"_

_How did everyone know that? "How do you know that?"_

"_I see the resultant impact fracture of bone, the damage, and most importantly, I know you." He killed the light screen and turned back to her, curling one of his big hands into a fist and then pointed to his thumb. "If you punch someone again, remember to tuck your thumb against the pointer and middle fingers, and hit with the first two knuckles so the bones in your arm line up for added support. You'll escape internal injury, but be warned, it'll still suck." Coming from a possible illegal, underground, bare knuckle champion, that was advice not to be disregarded._

_Even if Sherlock had told her first. _

_He crossed to a handsome oak cabinet and extracted a first aid kit that looked like serious business as Molly finally caved. She had to know. "You really aren't bothered by this whole thing?" Molly asked quietly as he dropped the giant case down on his desk and took a seat across from her in the other chair. _

_He made a noise in thought as he flipped the lid and started digging around for whatever it was he wanted. "I pride myself on not allowing people to influence my decisions based on popular opinion. When Will and Raph decided to start showering together, several 'close friends' walked away stating they weren't interested in the 'queer' thing. When Ben and Joe went to war over some girl back in Uni and they didn't speak for months, I maintained a close friendship with both on the basis of not giving two shits what they thought about the other." He extracted a special thumb brace that would immobilize the injured bit of her hand, and some bright blue wrappings as he continued with his explanation. "Most people don't like Ben because they think he is a weasel- and I can see where that perception comes from- but the guy is as loyal as a Labrador. He'd walk barefoot across fire and brimstone to help a buddy out. Raph, on several occasions, has bailed each of us out of trouble without ever accepting a pound in return- cops, poker debts, rent, you name it, he's shoveled out for it. He's got a heart of gold, and I'm loath to let people near him incase he's taken advantage of, because what guy is as nice as that? Which is why I sleep easier knowing he has Will. Because Will is _that _guy you want at your back in a fight, in your corner for an argument, and watching over you when you're too drunk to accurately count how many legs you have. He's tough and willing to take a hit for a friend in need. Which brings me to my little buddy, Joe. Joe is a good guy, he's my best mate. He's the Frodo to my Sam, or the Chewy to my Solo. He's not perfect, he has a strong touch of screw up about him, but damn it he'd give me the shirt off his back and the last few bucks in his wallet if he even felt I needed it more than he."_

_Molly was enraptured as she listened to him, touched for all these people that managed to put even a hint of genuine smile on his face- even if two of them were goons that she wouldn't mind seeing hit by a bus. "You'd make them blush if they heard you talking like this." She teased gently, still unsure._

_Wade snickered. "Will would call me a faggot, because that's how PC he is, but it is what it is. I've never let people push me into abandoning someone I like just because they don't care for them. I probably wouldn't have many friends left if I caved to Tara every time one of them messed up. She's about as fearsomely protective as they come." Like a mama bear…on steroids and menstrual cramps._

_Molly scrunched her face into a twisted cringe as she remembered how enraged the small receptionist had been when she had finally called her to let her know she had bailed on the market. "I'm sorry about that." She knew Wade probably copped it big time in some respect. "I tried to keep the damage manageable." She meant she tried to pretend seeing Joe fluttering around another twig of a woman didn't remotely faze her._

_Sherlock had always said she was a terrible liar. _

"_Well, seeing Joe with a blackening eye while arguing with Madonna-" Ah, stick woman had a name..."-was equivalent to a misfired suicide attempt- he only injured himself." _

_She watched as he meticulously fit the finger and wrist cast over her hand, covering the scar that stretched from knuckle to palm. Now she'd only have her ugly acid fingers for people to gawk at for a change of pace. What a lovely thought. "I am sorry, Wade. I never meant for things to go this far…or have you stuck in the middle."_

_He reached forward and lightly tugged a lock of her hair- which she had left down and half combed because it was a lazy day and her hand was bothering her. "Life isn't fair, Molls. You're a sweet girl and it would reflect poorly on me if I let Joe's scumbagging ruin a friendship. I keep all sorts of friends around that Tara doesn't like, and she practically wears the pants in this relationship. It wouldn't be right if I started now with you."_

_She gave him a relieved smile that may or may not have wobbled around the edges. "You're a prince, Wade."_

_He dimpled at her and Molly internally sighed at how handsome he was- Tara had all the ruddy luck. "Yeah, well, articulate that to Tara for me, will you? I'm worried she might be plotting something. I saw her talking to Sherlock the other day."_

"_They were fighting over pens." Molly corrected him. "Something about Sherlock specifically using all of her pink pen ink to make bombs." She didn't realize ink was a substance used in explosive making…or that pink was a critical ingredient. She saw no explosion marks that looked like somebody shot Hello Kitty or Malibu Barbie at point blank range._

_Sherlock was a doorway to another kind of time wasting experience. _

_Also, points to Wade for not even reacting to the news that a slightly off kilter, impromptu ballistics expert was only a few buildings over. "Oh, well, that's a relief."_

_Sensing another Sherlock peace keeping opportunity, Molly moved to play ambassador for the consulting boil- because she never knew when he'd do something reprehensible and the good buildup from months prior sometimes helped keep her fat out of the fryer. "You shouldn't have to worry about Sherlock getting his panties in a twist, Wade, unless you're sabotaging his cases or bothering him while he works. He normally isn't very attentive." He was very hands off unless she did one of the aforementioned._

_Or watched reality telly within visual bearing of him, because according to him she abused that stupidity._

_Jerk._

_Wade gave her a look, pausing in draping the vibrant blue wrap around her hand. "Whatever gets you to sleep at night."_

_She blinked at him, uncertain what to make of that. "I'm serious. He's all for fighting people but only if it benefits him. Joe's gone, and my attention has been freed infinitely up to cater to his childish antics. By the parameters he made up at the age of three, he's won." This conversation was starting to make her nervous- anything with Sherlock involved made her uneasy now, unless she was complaining about him._

_Ever since she acknowledged the possibility of the Potential…everything had been tinted with a slightly different shade of understanding._

_She was still scared._

"_Aw, he may not follow the basic formula the rest of us Homo sapiens do, but he's not that far off the mark." Wade expertly knotted her wrappings and had her wiggle her fingers. "There we go. All better!"_

Well…it looked all better. Sort of...

She liked the blue.

It was a happy color that really offset how unhappy she was- which _Cosmo _assured her was normal, before telling her to construct a complicated box chart of the following weeks, tracking her progress in the post breakup period so she could get over it easier. Whoever wrote those articles obviously had many a messy breakup because the advice was all very scientific- full of reporting and writing down observations and whatnot.

Not to mention virulent in that a person was stuck languishing over an ex for an absurd amount of time.

Tara recommended mint chip ice cream and Hugh Jackman movies- and that jewel was free of charge!

Stupid boys.

She could recall so easily how hard she worked to appear fine- to pretend she was miraculously better despite having severed ties with the goon just a half a week prior. It made her angry that she kept circling, kept remembering. She wanted to be done with this- with him. UGH! It made her mad. Was it too much to ask to have a survival button that allowed her to shut off her emotions? To make it so she didn't feel for at least a few days? Or selective attention on painful bits so she could function normally in everyday life and not drive her friends bonkers with her pity parties?

Lestrade, who had been pretty much sidelined because of his lung injury, happened to be her saving grace, because her DI knew people and how they interacted and how best to sort and deal with the continuous garbage people managed to dig up.

Who knew?

_The Steelers were playing some uber important game against the 49's and this required an emergency visit to the pub on one drizzly Monday. It was one of her randomly flexible days off and Lestrade was just plain sick of not doing anything at work, so he bailed with whatever excuse he had contrived to get out of pencil pushing- like they really needed to furnish a sound reason to being slumped at a bar before one P.M. on a work day. Molly was stuck in the disordered mindset of a battle hardened soldier back from the front lines after seeing the horrors of war, and Lestrade was just plain exhausted with being physically useless._

_So they were drinking away their problems like responsible grownups. _

"_Do not tell anyone in Serious Crimes that I'm enjoying this." He wiggled his glass containing the remnants of a mint julep he'd all but inhaled. "I've already enough bad images to contend with."_

"_You're the one who ordered it. I don't see a problem." Molly told him as she swirled her straw around in her own glass, watching the mint leaves through the spinning bits of ice. "Besides, they're really good." Sweet, with a refreshing kick in the pants. Plus, she could barely taste the bourbon and that was always a bonus- if a dangerous one._

_She was going to have to watch it with these._

"_They're in a sub category of bitch beer." Her DI expounded unnecessarily, sadden about not finding more of the cocktail in amongst the ice bits. _

_Molly tilted her chin and raised her eyebrows at him. "Why does it have to always be labeled with a female derogatory word to mean wussy? I mean, I autopsy dead bodies, see all sorts of nasty stuff, and you and several male members of your team can barely enter the morgue when I'm working on them. Yet, getting a drink that's brightly colored and flavorful is considered 'girly'."_

"_Because what you do is just plain gross. It's not macho or girl power-ly, it's just…icky." He told her, raising his hand to get the bartender's attention, which was easy enough to do- they were the only ones in the bar portion of the pub as the lunch crowd was primarily thrumming around the restaurant side. "I mean, you pick apart the people we find expired in their cars, houses, or the side of the road- sometimes they've been there for days or weeks. You have to smell them. They are all maggoty and horrifying if they've been allowed to go off for too long."_

_What a tit. "You're a manly man, aren't you?" _

"_Also, you've got Sherlock, who is as twisted as you are floating around, nicking arms and heads and eyeballs- which come from your lab, ergo, you as well." He continued on, ignoring her as he gestured for another mint julep. _

"_It's not that bad. It's clinical after a while." _

"_There is nothing clinical about eyeballs in mason jars, Molly." Lestrade tapped his fingers off the glossy wood of the bar top, narrowing his gaze at the big screen above them where somebody just scored a touchdown. "You'd think the Steelers would be more prepared for this season as Super Bowl contenders and all."_

_Molly was just proud enough to say she knew that the black and gold guys were the Steelers to begin with. "Eyes are great for first time dissections in medical school, Greg. They're easy, small, and require only one lab as opposed to say, a full limb, or head. A cadaver can take up to two weeks." Not to mention they were fantastic Sherlock distractors. She was not planning on cluing the Detective Inspector in on that tidbit however because he'd get all moral on her, just because it was Sherlock._

"_You're like a grave robber aren't you? People come through that morgue and you sticky finger their parts before gift wrapping them back up for the unassuming, grieving family." He pushed a five pound note forward as his drink was placed before him. _

_Molly rolled her eyes. "Please."_

"_How else do you get that many eyes?" The bartender gave them a freaked out look and she shook her head at him with an unassuming smile, hoping that he'd stick around long enough for her to place another order._

"_May I have a B52? Make it huge." She told him as she shoved her own money at him. "Believe it or not, Greg, eyes are one of the few parts that don't need immediate embalming after death. For instance, if the body isn't taken care of appropriately and the blood pools, it's technically useless to science, but there are parts- like the eyes- that are just fine still. Cadavers and limbs are harder to replace- eyes…not so much."_

_Lestrade shuddered. "Frankenstien."_

"_Pansy." She retorted, accepting her coffee drink with a happy little grin at the quick turnaround. "Ooo, this looks delicious!"_

"_You aren't even finished with your julep. No desserts till you finish your meal." Her companion told her with a pointed tumbler in her direction._

"_I'm going to drink them both. How else will I get rid of this ache?" She wiggled her retina burning blue encased fingers at him. _

_There was a swell of noise from the telly as another touchdown was scored and Greg raised a disbelieving hand to the announcers of ESPN, as if this gesture to a faceless individual would help clue them into the apparent injustice being committed onscreen. "Oh, c'mon! You can't penalize for that! He barely even plowed him! Bloody hell, what is this, their first time doing this- do you mean physically or emotionally?" Molly was staring at the big screen too, trying to figure out which beefcake in the tight pants he was talking about when Lestrade clicked his fingers in her face. At her lost expression he sighed, troubled with her lack of attention. "Is it your hand or your heart that aches?"_

_What the? Did she miss something? Because she could have sworn he was just heckling his football team. "Uh…" Lestrade must have entered the overly buzzed, philosophical stage of their happy hour- a state which she entered at the halfway point of her mint julep because she was a lightweight of the most tragic variety. "Slow down or we'll never find out if the Steelers win in this week's installment of football." _

_He just arched a brow or two at her. "Please, four shots of whiskey and a mint julep or two is nothing on my professional résumé. Answer my question." She would have that track record engraved on a plaque if it were her- Tipsy Two Beers Molly Hooper after all._

"_Sorry..." She began. "What was the question?"_

"_How's the hand?" He asked, almost shoving the straw of his drink up a nostril as he absently searched it out with his lips while keeping a beady eye on the game._

_Molly flexed her fingers before curling them in, thumb stuck jutting out in a permanent 'hitch hikers' gesture because of the brace. "It's not been terrible- well it wasn't until I banged it on the counter getting up into this stool when we arrived but it'll do." She was rambling, going on and on about how hard it was to open a bottle of soda or a packet of crisps without some serious mechanical feats of engineering._

"_How's the heart?" Lestrade thrust in at some point, startling her yakking into silence. At least he didn't tell her she should have 'tucked her thumb'. "Sherlock says you've been mopey."_

_A small thrill zipped into her consciousness and Molly shuddered at the feeling. Then she frowned. "Mopey?" That was one word, she was unequivocally certain, that was emblazoned on Sherlock's 'useless' list of 'Potential Expressions' he did not stomach entertaining- for the sake of common knowledge, 'I'm sorry', 'thank you', and 'friends' were all able to be found on this incorporeal roster of rudeness._

_Lestrade shrugged. "I can't pronounce half of what he said…but judging from the context of the question I originally asked, that's what I deciphered from it. So…mopey. Answer the question." He bossed at her again. It was probably for the best the average person didn't lug dictionaries around every day just in case a rogue, unidentified word sprouted up during discussions of proper tea making or something, just to cause instant, mass confusion. Sherlock's version of a simple explanation was often rife with taxing, rarely used vocabulary- because he was a git and possibly thought it was hilarious to enrage and intellectually repress every soul within earshot. Just because he could. _

_And she thought there was Potential…how?_

_She was not going down that road. _

"_Oh…well not much to report, honestly." She offered lightly._

"_Right, because breaking your fist into your ex's face is about as exciting as the yearly tax returns." Molly blinked, stunned. She hadn't told him about that. "Sherlock. Also, next time tuck the thumb so you don't break it." He answered for her, after catching her wide eyed countenance._

_Of course. _

_Fantastic. _

"_You guys gossip too much. It's not natural." She mumbled into her drink, nose almost stinging from bright mint scent._

"_Were you not going to tell me yourself? Of all the stories I should hear the second they occur, you brawling at my gran's favorite craft market is one of them-" Said the cop with a questionable disregard for his own rules. "-not what happened yesterday on_ Ellen_." Excuse you, sir. That was an incredibly important story- stupid, but important. He must have seen the expression on her face because he shook his head sharply. "No! It was dumb! I am officially a fraction point more stupid than I was before you told me about Zachary Quinto and his magnificent eyebrows."_

_She had failed with him somewhere along the line. This rebelliousness troubled her soul._

"_So, what's up? We have time. It's not like we have pressing shit to do being that it's not even one on a Monday, and we've been solidly drinking since before noon."_

_Point well made, Inspector. "Well…" She started awkwardly. "I didn't want to burden you-"_

"_Bollocks." Lestrade snapped, clearly irritated by this excuse. "I was stabbed, not diagnosed with cancer! I get poked with one little knife and suddenly I'm too fragile to even make it to the Xerox machine." The bartender was openly gawking at them now. He had her utmost, buzzed sympathies._

_She hunched down over the last dredges of her julep and sucked hard, finally putting the drink completely down. "I wanted to ask about your thoughts concerning it, actually." She said after a bloated pause of careful consideration. Lestrade was removed- and inherently nice enough- to usually have fascinating insights that did not come with sleeper cells set to erupt at the worst moments when she finally figured out what they meant- hence why she hadn't discussed stuff in depth with Sherlock…because he was an ass and wouldn't care while being an ass. "I just…It's not been smooth sailing-"_

"_Clearly." _

"_Git." She snipped, before her face started to slacken as she thought about things. All things. Joe things…relationship things. _

_Things she did wrong._

"_Molly?" He called to her, his voice losing most of its teasing humor._

"_I wish I could just erase the whole thing." She told him, eyes locking into a middle distance he could not perceive. "I wish I could get that time back or…just not have wasted the time to begin with or something. I'm so angry at how it ended I can physically taste the bitterness." _

_The distant white noise of several thousand fans cheering alerted her to the football game being back on the telly, yet when she glanced up, it was to Lestrade's intense face focused completely on her. "Why would you want to wipe out your experience?"_

_Obvious. "Because it was all for naught. We didn't work out-"_

_He was shaking his head. "Experience, Molly, is never a waste. It's valuable. It's always valuable."_

_Oh, is that what they were calling familiarity with being ignored by one's boyfriend for days before having to assume the relationship null and void based on forfeit alone? "Says the guy who wasn't dropped like a sack of potatoes for a Madonna who was thin and pretty, and not a frumpy little pathologist." Oh, God. She was resentful because Barbie snagged her loser man. Dropping her head onto the bar top, she groaned. "Greg, kill me now! This is pathetic!" Heaven help her, she was sick of this, of wasting 'one more second' on that cheating bastard- yes, she was going to file his actions into the cheating category because the separation line had been an extremely fuzzy one. _

"_Can we get a shot over here? Something strong!" Lestrade called before randomly tapping his fingers gently on the top of her head as he calculated his response._

"_What's wrong with me?" She was almost nauseated from languishing over this. _

"_You're still raw. It's been less than a week- this is normal." He told her. "Honestly, you're handling it rather well." He meant that he hadn't heard anything about her howling like a banshee in the bathroom- she didn't…she may have been a bit weepy the first two days at home but that was it…_

…_okay, so maybe once she had blubbered to herself in her thinking stall, but that was it. Nobody had been around- she was allowed to have a freak-out here and there! _

_Her slumping all over the bar that day had been the extent of her displays of emotional turmoil- because nobody wanted to see that and she was drunk. "Doesn't feel like it." She grumbled, face smashed inelegantly into the polished wood of the bar top. _

"_That's because your feelings were hurt." Lestrade said quietly. "Publically, I might add."_

_How humiliating. Thanks for freshly turning that up to breathe, Lestrade._

_A thump near her temple had Molly pulling her head up. A shot class full of whiskey or bourbon or scotch…maybe even tequila- she couldn't tell- awaited her. "I find that rough life experiences are the best teachers. They're harsh, painful to touch, and usually anger inducing." Lestrade began, churning the ice in his julep in thought. "Finding yourself in the wake of such occurrences is even more daunting because there are strong moments where all you want to do, is give up." Here he looked at her, and Molly felt a shift in her gregarious drinking partner as his tougher, sturdier side moved to reinsert itself into his personality. "Dating Joe was never a mistake, Molly. You two were happy while it lasted."_

_She dropped her eyes, a pain near her heart slowly starting to bloom. "It wasn't enough, apparently." Joe had wanted her to cut other areas out of her life that made her happy. She'd soon as cleave her own leg off as sever ties with Sherlock and his mucking about in the lab with her. He was more than just some goofball genius; he was more than just a bratty man-child. _

_He was her friend._

_He was her best friend- even if he didn't see her that way or completely understand the messy innards behind the title itself. _

"_And that's okay." Surprised, she snapped her brown eyes back to his handsome face, mind whirling but no thoughts sticking anymore. Okay? How was this situation 'okay'? With what reference was he inferring that the incineration of her dating life was remotely 'okay'? His brow suddenly contorted in worried thought as he scrutinized her miserable features. "Wait, you weren't- were you planning on marrying this guy? After less than six months?"_

_She scowled, insulted as he no doubt saw her as a silly heart- and a nitwit- in that moment. "No! I didn't even love him! But…there's always a chance that something stronger could have come from my investment." She was hanging around Sherlock too much, it seemed. Only he used business lingo in reference to human interactions because it separated the emotional side from the practical, or at least that was what she had managed to gather from his near continuous complaining about insufferable humans._

_As if he was a cut above the rest of planet Earth's inhabitants… _

_Lestrade stared at her. "Don't go all sociopath on me, missy. Sherlock's brilliant but he's harsh on people in general." Ah…he recognized the word usage as well. They were all hanging out with Sherlock too much apparently, because being tough on people- _

_Wait…_

_Wait one cotton pickin' moment…_

_She felt her lip curl as she zeroed in on a troubling thought that kept pricking at her. "If you are thinking about protecting Joe-"_

"_Of course not! The guy's an assclown-" Assclown? "-but we're getting off subject, Molly. My point is that you and Joe didn't work out, but anguishing over what happened, wishing it all away is a bleak way of fielding the damage." Lestrade steamrolled her outburst right into nonexistence- which was good, because she might have clobbered him. "Experience. You've gained experience, which is the equal, but more ignored point to dating. You're test driving models until you find the right fit for you; feeling what works and what doesn't, and what to look for in future options. Kinda like car shopping." Yeah, well, cars didn't just wander off and never call to let you know where they misplaced themselves._

_Thinking about what he said, she recognized the empty disappointment that followed his, most likely, wise words. She felt…cheated- but should she? She knew Lestrade to be oddly intuitive to the beating heart of most situations- that he was always good for his word when he saw how people and their interactions might play out and how to field the unexpected that came with working in a largely public field- see Sherlock Holmes, the world's ONLY Consulting Detective- because if anything gave credence to Lestrade's sixth sense on people, it was bringing in a difficult man that could and did make a world of difference in city as large as London. It was sound advice, it was good advice, but it didn't make the sting of hurt and humiliated memories go away, which is all that she truly wanted. "Yeah…"_

"_It's not meant to be a fix all solution. It's a tool, a skillset designed to help you endure the trials and move forward stronger for it." Lestrade said as he pushed the shot into her hands, before picking his own up and gesturing for her to do the same. "Besides, any girl that can survive the shit you have, and remain as caring and sweet as you are, can handle way worse than whatever that little sod can possibly throw at you. You owe it to yourself to not accept less." _

_Still feeling pretty beat, Molly slipped her fingers about the little glass with the power to make her forget and compound her problems. "If you say so…" _

"_I know so. Cheers!"_

It took a few days but Molly gradually came to accept that Lestrade was right, in more ways than one, which really wasn't that surprising as he was a cop, a detective, and a man who had seen his share of nightmares- the very worst that people could do to each other, the stuff true horror stories were made of. He had the stress of the world on his shoulders, which came with horrible perks like being questioned by everyone and their mother's cabbie's sister on his competency, his ability to know right from wrong, his choices…

Sherlock.

Lestrade constantly took heat for involving the mouthy genius, and there were days that she could see a communal protest was well founded. She experienced the same thing but, while it was her lab and morgue when Bernard was out of house, she had no clout to push her wishes like Lestrade did. She didn't know why- outside of her stammering, apologizing, and basic begging that he wasn't doing anything really wrong, Sherlock was never officially, or successfully, banned. Oh, they had made halfhearted attempts, but rent-a-cops couldn't really give a toss about their contracts when the amount of rubbish they had to put up with outstripped their pay by leagues. There hadn't been a serious attempt to exorcize him for about a year now- which was how she liked it since she had invited the cerebral vampire in for a reason after all….and this all but confirmed that she seek out professional help as soon as possible.

So there was merit to be found with her lovely DI's skillset instructions. Still, it was just incredibly frustrating that her brain wouldn't let her obliterate the Joe memories and be done with it.

Even Sherlock had little to offer on his front and she seriously considered- like looked up and wrote down numbers to Doctors, serious- getting her brain scanned because why on Earth would she have assumed he'd be remotely helpful?

_-"How do you deal with things you don't want to think about?"_

"_Exposure to your atrocious sentence structure, for example, I merely delete."_

"…_does deleting actually abolish all memory of the incident? Or you just makin' that up?"_

"_Not if you keep reintroducing your lack of education into my active awareness."_

"…_what about people?"_

"_I'm busy, Molly."_

Sherlock was such a jerk. Why did this always surprise her?

Maybe she should have called him an assclown…then he would have had to pay attention to her if only to belittle her some more about her language skills- as if he hadn't done plenty of that already. For the sake of clarity alone, she was far from a signing ape in a cage on communication, okay. She just wasn't as rigid and refined in her delivery as Professor Screwball, who took advantage of his linguistic talents to depreciate any person that accidently drew his scalpel sharp attention. The vituperation must have been a Holmes family trait, lovingly cultivated in the two sons who were so alike it was frightening- not that they would ever, ever, ever agree on that comparison because they were also argumentative and stubborn to a fault.

So what if one was a master extortionist with an umbrella as opposed to a Belstaff Millford? She saw no discernible difference beyond their chosen fashion accessories- there, _apparently_, was a humongous difference and how dare she make such a moronic, not to mention, highly inaccurate, association in matters she was clearly illiterate in.

He sulked for three hours, and rained piss and vinegar on her the entire time with his illuminating commentary- Sherlock was so fragile when it came to outward fraternal appraisals. It really begged the question what their parents must have been like because there was no way Sherlock's abrupt offensiveness was bred into him by any sane human being. Maybe if his parents were Gomez and Morticia Addams, then she could possibly maybe understand it…

Feeling incredibly pathetic, and hating every minute of it, Molly became a bit more of a recluse in her lab- because she couldn't hide her poor attitude well enough and didn't want the stigma of Sad Single Sally and her thirty cats following her around St. Bart's, because, yes, while single, Molly didn't have a cat- they just seemed like sly, unfriendly little bastards and she already had a Sherlock, who embodied that description beautifully…outside the little bit because at six foot with a thirteen ton ego, the man was everything but little- and she had no inclination of getting one because…well…she already had a creature assuming the role of haughty freeloader with too many demands as it was.

Also, since Sherlock was so 'lovely' and 'understanding' most of the time, she didn't feel any particular compunction to pretend around him- he would just nag about her lying and how awful she was at it. Why he always felt the need to point out when she was fibbing, Molly didn't know, but if she tried harder, he only became harsher in his critic.

It was like he encouraged her, only to become surlier if she actually did 'put the effort in'.

_-"You lied."_

"_Dang it, how did you know?"_

"_I observe. Why did you lie?"_

"_Because I didn't want you to be mad that I had to throw it out, Sherlock. That fungus reeked!"_

"_Don't do it again."_

"_I won't."_

"_You just did!"_

In the lab, she didn't have to sham and parade around as anything but what she was, depressed and moody. Bernard buoyed her dignity by not allowing her to wallow completely, and Sherlock was just considerate enough- just barely mind you- to not pick on her- most of the time because he was busy testing flesh densities against needles. When she chirped falsehoods like 'I'm fine' or 'I'm doing very well' to other lab technicians, Mike, Tom, or heaven forbid Nicolas Hatcher- Sherlock's bad temper about collapsed and formed a singularity, a black hole, at the microbiologist fluttering about HIS lab chatting to a recently single Molly who, sadly, was enjoying the chance at an emotional rebound of her own.

Even if Nic was a dishy goon.

Sherlock didn't allow for that- she could be grumpy, awful, mopey, and sad, but if she falsified pleasantries with morons like Nic, he got all sorts of huffy- after some careful reflection and just years of experience dealing with him and his funky quirks, she was still completely in the dark on what this meant. It could be that he was just looking out for her, or that he plain hated decent people who utilized manners even to people they weren't thrilled about being polite too in the first place.

Plausible explanation.

She did know he had been doing his watcher thing of his- where he monitored her throughout the day and nagged her if she was not being 'Molly' enough for his sense of completion.

She would have been a big fat liar if she didn't think that his grouchy hovering was sweet- if rather annoying- as he was a bit of a HUGE git about it.

The only problem with her little hermit idea- Sherlock was all for it without ever having to express his big mouthed opinion- was Tara, bless her. Tara refused to allow Molly to hide and lick her wounds raw, and so spent the following days after the Incident dragging Molly out to eat at her favorite sandwich eatery- the same one that Tara had once assaulted an entire table of boorish men. It had been months…they were banking on nobody remembering- or down to the cafeteria with a supportive Wade in tow, armed with the newest issue of _Vogue_. Sometimes, if Molly was in a particularly black mood- that she was NEVER proud of admitting too- Tara would cut her losses and they'd watch reality TV over a pizza- it was the off season so everything was reruns, but they had the same effect on Sherlock as always.

"_Why?" He needled while glaring at them as Tara kicked her stool back and plopped her royal blue wedges up on the counter that he was working at, munching shamelessly on a slice of pizza as the opening music to _Keeping Up with the Kardashians _rolled off the telly. It wasn't one of Molly's favorite shows, but there wasn't anything better- worse- on. She'd seen every episode this season, thrice. _

_The receptionist gave him a flat look. "You have yet to win ground in this fight, Sherlock. You might as well accept defeat." _

"_You've seen this! What purpose does reviewing this rubbish for a second time serve aside from rotting what precious little intellect you have to spare?" He asked steadily, but his eyes were flashing annoyance like blue road flares. _

"_Well, for kicks, it bothers you." She chirped brightly, giving him a smile so fake, Molly savored the cheap plastic of it. "Always a good thing."_

_Molly, feeling a building tirade, moved to help- to conquer, they had to divide his attention as that was one of the ONLY ways to wear Sherlock Bloody Holmes down to human levels- "You weren't doing anything of critical importance Sherlock, so we really aren't disturbing you." She could see him swelling like a bullfrog in his judgment that she was clearly and perpetually wrong. "Also, you like the _Kardashians_." She told him before taking a bite of her own pizza. In terms of her reality bingeing and his loud complaining concerning it, the _Kardashians _seemed to draw a lot less of his negativity than say _Jerry Springer_. Probably because she didn't watch it as much as other shows._

"_Are you high?" He demanded of her and she choked on a mushroom. "The day I partake of this garbage willingly-"_

"_It'll be the closest we'll ever get to the second coming of Christ." Tara interrupted with a snicker. "Ease up, Sherly. It's not the end all be all of the day."_

_Sherly? Sherlock's eyes were mere slits as he glowered at her- what she didn't call him that- almost daring her to use that nickname- which she most certainly would be in the near future. "Want some pizza?" She offered instead, pushing the box to within his reach. "You haven't eaten today."_

"_Who could stomach anything with the way you two gormandize the senses?" Uh…what?_

_Tara was frowning at her pizza as well, trying to locate what that meant in the hidden depths of vegetables and sauce. "You LIKE pizza." Molly told him, latching onto the only bit of that conversation she could recognize._

_Sherlock looked pained. "There must be help for people like you."_

Gormandize…she had to look that word up- sneakily too, so he didn't lecture her anymore on being stupid. How he was able to still use those random, odd, and unfamiliar words in normal conversations irked her because he had to run out of them at some point, right? The English language had some half a million words recognized by Merriam-Webster and if he used like…forty every conversation, he had to run out in the next…twenty-five years…- she spent more time leafing through dictionaries then she cared to actively recall.

She was irritated with this vocabulary instruction she was receiving free of charge.

If there was a perceptible boon to come from her new status in society, it was that Sherlock was a lot more relaxed- because it was important to keep his Highness comfortable at all times- in that he knew she had nowhere else to be. A free agent.

Or a servant, depending on the vernacular a person wished to utilize to accurately describe what her role was to one Sherlock Bloody Holmes.

He kept breaking beakers and petri dishes with combustible substances- enough so that she had to put an order in to get a new shipment to stay off the questions that Bernard would inevitably yell at her- she was so forcing that string bean to help her unload that truck, because there was no way she'd be able to lift a fifty pound box all by her lonesome and Tara refused to do anything that might ruin her manicure.

He was a secret muscle man- he could do all the heavy lifting for once.

He had also taken to hitting bodies with things- which honestly freaked her out the first time because, even for him, that was flipping weird.

"_Molly!" He called as he blew through her double gray doors like a noisy breeze. "I need a new body!"_

_She jumped, dragging her pen across the latest blood biopsy results for some recently minted cadaver in London General that her counterpart there had faxed her. Something about the T cell count being off but it wasn't cancer. "That's something you're going to have to take up with Big Guns upstairs, Sherlock." She sighed, heart thumping oddly loud from his explosive appearance, as she searched for her little whiteout bottle._

"_What?" He said loudly, coming to a stop before her. "I said I need a body."_

_Slanting her eyes to look at him, Molly did a double take and stared. "Off to practice your swing?"  
That or he was here to make Donovan's idiotic accusations into reality, because there were no bodies around except hers that he could use that golf club on. He caught her wide eyed look and snorted before raising the club off his shoulder and letting the bulbous end drop heavily onto her report, crinkling it._

"_Don't be obtuse. I need to test impact factures on bone." He gave her a benign little smile and Molly immediately felt that she wasn't getting paid enough for this sort of event to be taking place in her 'office'. _

"_Sherlock…" She started as patiently as she could. "I have three bodies- two that are destined for FAMILY to bury and one that goes to Oxford for a lecture-"_

"_The family of the burned victim will do nicely." He informed her and she blinked stupidly at him. What the hell, this wasn't a McDonald's. He couldn't just order a body like that._

"_Are you completely bonkers?"_

"_Closed casket- it'll be a must." He shrugged, unrepentant at her scandalized censure. "He has no skin on his head."_

"_I'm aware of his current physical status, Sherlock! I'm not letting you beat that man with a club to test broken bones!" She said, actually standing up and trying to tug the golf club from him- where did he even get such a thing? He most certainly did not play golf- he said it was for 'yuppy pencil pushing yeoman' because one time Bernard told her he was off for his tee time and Sherlock sensed an opportunity to be a git. As a stout member of the English, tea sipping public, this was confusing in that he just took his tea at his desk normally; he never had to leave before. Then Sherlock grunted something derogatory about the older pathologist's amusements and Bernard threatened to shove a driver up the detective's left nostril if he didn't start respecting his seniors._

_A worrying thought occurred to her and Molly hurriedly danced her eyes over the metal club before her. "Oh, my, this isn't Bernard's, is it?" She asked in dread. It looked expensive- where would he have gotten ahold of this?_

"_Of course not. It's Mycroft's." He flippantly stated as he hefted the thing up and banged the swollen head of the club off the linoleum floors in careless abandon. She winced at the ring the poor metal stick was singing in its abuse. "These things are expensive too." He grinned wickedly and Molly felt the need for reform had long since passed for this particular man. They were all victims along for a ride on his crazy train. He must have seen her almost permanent grimace because he pointed a finger at it. "What? He hate's golfing." _

_As if this made the stealing of a sibling's dreadfully expensive golf clubs, A-okay! "And where does that make if alright for you take one and beat a dead body with it?"_

"_Dunno." He told her absently as he practiced a slow swing, as if hitting a sluggishly moving curve ball. "Back to task! I need a body."_

"_No." She said. "No, not happening. No." Sherlock suddenly looked so dejected- she about passed out from the lack of affect his 'sad face' was having on her. "No, you git! I will not lose my job over you bashing at my dead cadavers."_

"_Molly," He sighed. "You must be reasonable here-"_

"_You want to beat a dead person with a driver! How am I being unreasonable?"_

"_-a case could be solved over the findings I reap from this study." He finished without acknowledging her logic at all, idly twirling the metal bar of the club about in his deft fingers. "Really, it's work for the good of the public."_

_He was such a goofball. She considered him for a second before- "No." And not a moment too soon, because as Sherlock was setting up to bang his new toy off the walls in objection, Donny Mathews came strolling into the lab. It was such an unexpected event- Donny showing up out of the blue- that Molly only had time to freeze in horror, a wheezing whine slipping past her lips as she watched Sherlock swing hard, only to let go of the iron altogether- OH MY GOD- letting it spin like a top before him, and catching it again in one smooth motion._

…_what…_

_What kind of sodding sorcery was this? Was he trying to make her stroke out?_

"_Ah, Molly! Sherlock!" Donny called as he maneuvered around the random stools scattered about, making his way to her desk before coming to a halt. Oh, Sweet Christ, here it comes. She can already hear the reprimand about Sherlock swinging that thing around as if he were a Louisville slugger- "Oh, my, is that a Taylor, Sherlock?"_

…_What…?_

"_Latest model." Sherlock's answering grin was indulgent- and a horrible lie- as he brought the club up before him like a sword. "Supposed to achieve the precise combination of launch angle and spin-rate that encourages maximum carry and roll. Improved aerodynamics reduce drag over the head to promote faster clubhead speed." He rattled off with such enthusiasm, she felt like maybe she was experiencing some sort of hallucination. _

"_A clear step up from the R1, yes? I've heard good things, but haven't had a chance to clock my draws yet." Donny tipped his head. "What do you recon that the angle improves or negates the weights?"_

"_Oh, indeed." Sherlock tilted the game piece about as if carefully considering its role in a pastime he loathed with a burning passion. "I'd say with the proper adjusting, it's well worth the added counterbalance to help the eight percent swing. Of course, that depends on the caliber of the player." He added with an important tip in his voice, really leaning on the hoity toity side of his word enunciation. _

_Posh…liar._

"_Agreed, agreed." Donny nodded eyes bright with all the golf talk. "Might have to get you out on the green soon, Sherlock. See those puppies in action."_

_That would not be happening unless somebody ruthlessly slew the entirety of the Staffordshire Golf Club in cold blooded secret. For the sake of the English monied class, Molly prayed that Sherlock's interests in the boring diversion stay well clear of the actual activity itself._

It started that day, and she was proud to say she had not caved. Even though he didn't get to slap a corpse about with his brother's hideously pricey clubs, Molly could see a problem in the making, which was just, fudging, fantastic of him because it wasn't as if she didn't have enough personal rubbish to wade through and sort, but she now had to field his random bouts of high octane schadenfreude that he swore was 'case based'.

Uh huh, yeah. No.

How new did he think she was?

That she couldn't spot a Sherlockian ploy to experiment in the 'out of bounds' zone when it came to the mores of society? Flagellation of corpses was definitely a major 'no no'. A right catastrophe, not to mention at least a huge law suit, if the family ever found out.

Positively flirting with prison time was what it meant to be friends with this one enormous brain with legs.

Which is why she about melted the skin off her chest and collar when she came waltzing into the lab one day to see Bernard watching Sherlock taking a cane to the body of a convict down from county through the glass windows that displayed the morgue wonderfully for potentially every family member or Board director walking through. In her stunned disbelief, she spilled the entire contents of her hot cup of coffee down her front and the burn was just enough to roughen her voice as she all but kicked the morgue doors into bouncing off the walls.

_-"Bernard! NO!"_

"_He's dead, Molly, he isn't hurting him."_

"_That's NOT the POINT! What are you allowing- do you not SEE how- WHY?"_

"_He's gathering data on a practical facet to postmortem examinations and where-"_

"_He's beating that dead man with a- with a, Oh, my GOD- SHERLOCK! Stop that!"_

Nobody ever listened to her. The one person in charge of Sherlock wrangling and NOBODY ever listened to her when it came to letting the man-child do things within HER lab. And he had finally managed to corrupt Bernard- it had only taken him some three years but sweet Jesus, they were all bloody nuts! A whole body was not a foot or a liver or a chunk of thigh! It was a person as opposed to a fragment and she had to put a fence up somewhere to keep her favored consulting doofus in line.

Now, forever more, she would be fighting an uphill battle to keep him from mutilating the dead even more so than she did- and hers was for the good of the dead, living, and the public at large! For real, as opposed to Sherlock's self-serving divergences from normal into the grotesque theatre of the absurd that he created to keep the brain from stagnating. The person was already dead! What good would postmortem bruising patterns do for anybody?

Apparently, according to Dr. Smartypants, this was crucial in determining whether a death was a set up or not. Specific bruising patterns would denote possible weapons of choice leading to the killer, instigator, neighbor, family member, coworker-

Did she look like she cared about the specific bruising patterns? She was clearly able to determine if a bruise was inflicted before a person died, sir, as it was huge part of her JOB! Was it necessary to take every…thing…he could physically pick up and wield and slap it ruthlessly into dead flesh?

She highly doubted people were being bumped off with whippet thin sticks, thank you.

One would have thought she wiped her runny nose on him the way he reeled back and stared at her in disgusted silence, before launching into one of his rants on how she slacked on the important details and that she should be ashamed of herself. He said the same exact thing about her admitting to watching _Ghost Hunters_, so she used the same bored expression she had every time he blathered his thoughts on the fun things in life to allow him to see and understand the depth of her disinterest in his opinions on the matter.

The thing was, she couldn't tell if Sherlock's over the top weirdness was just him growing more bold- alarming thought- in his position as St. Bart's personal parasite, or if he was just trying to distract her from slumping about the lab in a lackluster effort to appear peachy keen. She had distantly- after Bernard pointed it out- noticed that if she were having a particularly troubling day, or if she was sinking into a black mood, Sherlock would start acting up like a tetchy motor. Smooth sailing was possible, but he might malfunction, catch fire, and affectively disfigure all on board.

This…was annoying.

It did not take Dr. Sodding Phil to see that adding an emotionally constipated wanker to the mix of unstable, emotionally compromised girl would not produce a healthy biosphere for the denizens of the morgue and lab.

Time would allow her to eventually peak into the heart of maybe what Sherlock had been trying to accomplish, but that was years down the road. As for the moment when he'd be his cantankerous self, bossing at her to 'desist from dawdling in one attitude' when all she wanted to do was wallow in pity, Molly truly felt that he could not be trying harder to make her lose her marbles.

"_Is this mindset a permanent fixture? Because if it is, I will melt your stereo and hurl the whole thing into the Thames. This music is hideous, and I cannot work much longer with its intolerable existence tormenting my thought process." He started some ten days after the Incident as she typed tiredly at her desk, trying for all she was worth to imagine a world where Sherlock had a mute button._

"_Be nice." She said without hope, clicking through her tabs to return to the email she was replying to from DI Ryder about a case she handled some four months prior._

"_Stop weltering in pathetic dejection because it is rather unbecoming on a woman. Even you should be above such…enthusiastic displays of desperation." He nattered off, scowling at everything, but mostly her and her stereo, which was playing the soundtrack from _Titanic_- she found the CD in a drawer in the employee lounge, and decided to listen to it. There was something innately comforting about the music to a movie where a sturdy ship hits a chunk of ice and sinks, killing hundreds of people including the protagonist's love interest. "Turn this junk off." He commanded and she grit her teeth as she stared hard at her computer screen, starting to count down from ten._

_He was a blob of poor manners when he got into one of his loggerheaded grooves and started to just…dig._

_How she hadn't offed him or herself yet this far into the game, would remain one the mysteries of the world._

"_I'm listening to it." She returned mildly, begging silently for patience._

"_It's excruciating, not mention beyond unpalatable with this orchestral composition. Judging by this sampling alone, it is not a wonder how you acquired such questionable suitors like Joe." Sherlock kept picking, jabbing at wounds she did not like to even look at- Joe._

_She started down again from thirty this time._

"_Monstrously unappealing is a woman with deplorable taste in men-"_

_That's it._

_Snatching at the first thing she could get her hand around- her phone…damn it- Molly chucked it as hard as she could at his head, and watched in a darkening red haze of infuriated madness, as he caught the sodding thing easily out of the air- probably saving it from a messy death because her aim was terrible. "Oh, I needed this." He said absently as he set to immediately texting Satan to give a live update on all the Hell he was wreaking on Earth. She would never admit to being impressed at his no look evasion of the tape dispenser that zipped through the physical space that his head had been previously occupying before splattering into the wall behind him. "Temper, Temper, old girl." He said, fingers flying over his message._

_She hissed. "Would. You. Leave. Me. Alone." She was going to kill him._

"_Your Neanderthal like emoting is not remotely impressive." _

"_Sherlock!" She barked, trembling from her anger. "Just. Stop." So going to kill him- the only saving grace she would offer him would be that he would know who bludgeoned him to death, and that would save his ghost from the mystery. He'd be at peace…in pieces._

_Such a jerk._

_Steel blue eyes skipped from the device in his hands and held her glare. "If it bothers you so much, than change."_

_Of course he misinterpreted her. Of course. "You are such a jerk. I am trying! It's been ten days! I really liked him!" Her voice strained with the tension of trying to keep her shit together. "I am __trying__."_

_He narrowed his gaze into a sharp glare of his own which she matched with interest. "No. You are not."_

_She refused to admit how much that hurt. Instead, she sucked in a breath, dropped her eyes and hurriedly started to gather some folders to drop off in reception. Forget this, she was not buckling under his heat seeking tosser torpedoes! She refused! So she was going to step out and take a breather- and not cry in her favorite stall- doing anything that would put some space between them so she could calm down, so she wouldn't burst into tears- she was proud to say she hadn't cried since the second day after breaking her hand, but having the equivalent of a robot stabbing at her most vulnerable moments with his impromptu 'man up' put downs was a bit much to take. Sherlock was abrasive naturally, but he was never this awful- or maybe he was, and she just didn't have the padding built up anymore to take his crap and fling it back into his face gift wrapped with a smile._

_Despite Celine Dion crooning in the background, the silence between her and him was oppressive- which it so rarely ever was anymore. He had made his point, and she, for the first time in…years, couldn't take it. She couldn't handle him right now and as THAT thought started to burrow in, she could feel the sting high up in her nose._

_Yes indeed, that there was her best friend alright._

_She was so stupid._

_The only victory she could take away from the conversation was a confirmation on her adamancy that she would not like him, that the Potential was unfounded in that he acted like this, that he said these things to her._

_That he hurt her, purposely this time, to drive his point home._

_Snapping her paperwork to her chest, Molly tilted her chin down and made to move past him. She was bailing on this discussion until she had a strong enough grip on her feelings to not dissemble before him like a headless ninny. That would be embarrassing and she was tougher than that. _

_She still believed it at least. _

_She was going to slink off to Tara, and she was going to not cry as she coerced the receptionist into getting coffee with her._

_Then she was going to proceed to make him miserable as God intended. The horse's arse._

"_Excuse me." She mumbled at him, letting him know she was done with this. Molly prayed for the composure to just get beyond the double gray doors. She'd be okay on the other side._

_When his six foot frame blocked her escape as he 'casually' shifted to the side, still texting away on her phone, Molly could not decide whether he was being a dick on purpose, or if she were overly sensitive and just seeing things. Attempting to duck around him again, she altered her course to just go completely around him and the work island altogether and he dashed her efforts into nothing, again, endorsing the idea that he was doing this intentionally. When a large hand slunk around her bicep and held her in place, she jumped, startled, but kept her eyes glued to his light blue button down in a preservationist instinct she had cultivated from being friends with him over the years._

_A person needed at least some defense from his overbearing inclinations toward the blunter side of rude._

"_Try harder." The rich timbre of his voice was naturally warm, but even she could hear the gentled dip in it this time. He pulled his hand away and she sighed shakily, before flinching as those warm fingers hooked under her chin to tug her face up to meet his heated regard. Pale eyes contemplated her for only a moment, before he hummed in thought. "You aren't putting in the effort here."_

_It sounded so pompous and she could literally feel the clouded expression that overcame her as she watched him watch her…_

_He was something else…_

_Until the skin around his eyes softened just a little bit and he let his hand slide away with a smooth sweep of his thumb over her cheek. "It's not a pleasure to experience this alongside you." His baritone had returned to his standard of discourteous condescension, but she could still feel the uncharacteristic warmth left by his equally atypical touch._

Sherlock was remarkably tolerant of touch- she forgot herself a lot and touched him, even hugged him periodically, which he instinctively whined about on some weird principle he paid some serious homage to- but he very rarely initiated contact…unless he was nicking her things or flapping her hands away from his microscope, stuff, experiments, stuff, favored stool, and other stuff that fell under his convoluted understanding of 'his'. If he could physically keep Londoners from using the cab system when he wanted to use the cab system, he would.

Very much like a lording toddler.

So she had to take pause the second he let her go and she was safely barricaded on the other side of the double gray doors, and dissect what just happened- okay she was positively pawing at the idea he touched her. Willingly.

Crud, crap, snippity snap, she was so not looking any further in that direction.

No.

Be gone, Potential!

Not happening.

She was fine. She was cute enough- just because Joe dropped her like a plate of rotten fish heads when things didn't go his way, didn't mean another man wouldn't find her desirable and would want to stick it out with her through good and bad times- this wasn't her fault! Joe was a weakling like Sherlock and Tara and Bernard and her sister and mother all said because he couldn't hack a little heat.

If only Sherlock hadn't chased Nic off so effectively. She could have used the rebound- not that she was one to toy with someone just to make herself feel better, but the thought of having that little weasel make an attempt made her feel just a bit better. She was lucky if a man took the time to even notice her.

She wasn't desperate! She swore she wasn't desperate!

Maybe a tiny bit…

She had looked it up in _Cosmo, Vogue_, and even _Elle- _last ditch effort that last one-to no avail, which was either extremely comforting…or a complete waste of time being that there weren't exactly documented cases like hers. The second she thought of her marginally dramatic breakup as a specific 'case' she knew for a fact she was obsessing- and idiotically so- and OF COURSE there were other instances of bad breakups like hers floating around. Plenty of them, but for the sake of all that was holy, she liked to pretend she was better than the average dumpee- ha ha ha, nooo, she was not.

Thank the Lord nobody but the big coccydynia in the lab had called her on it- but he didn't count because his everlasting abscess of impoliteness in the brain was inoperable, thus never endorsing him to shut up when things did not need or warrant his jarringly rude input.

Git.

She didn't have enough to think about as work was mildly agitating with Sherlock blowing fuses and melting slides- how the heck he managed that last bit was insane- Bernard was handling most of the autopsies and leaving her with the stupid paperwork, and just a general lack of mentally engaging things to keep her occupied. Sherlock was only so much of a menace and even he wasn't that bad to begin with- she just liked to bellyache about him to him because he made the most fascinating faces when she got on a tangent that even he had trouble ignoring.

He liked the subject of himself, the ham.

London wasn't roiling under the covers and the criminal element was, for once, silent- according to every cop and superhero movie or documentary she had ever seen, this wasn't necessarily a good sign, but oh well. The collective scumbag population was Lestrade's problem and Sherlock's hobby, and she could care less when it stacked up against her miserable little existence all because some yahoo really kicked her in the heart.

Thank God Almighty for girls, she remembered strongly thinking as she took solace and comfort from Tara, who had about a dozen different messy romance stories that ended poorly for either her or somebody she personally knew. It was a comfort hearing- even though she wasn't remotely delusional about it- that other people had gone through this previously. Tara, herself, had several tales to regale and Molly spent many a lunch and break with the receptionist, hashing through insecurities and wounded feelings, which if she were completely honest, that's all she had really wanted to do to begin with. To talk about it and this effectively eliminated every Y chromosome of her acquaintance. Men, aside from the possible gay man on occasion, had no interest discussing the same topic so thoroughly.

She had to cover all sides, all colors, all the words spoken and the context behind those words by the person speaking them. Tara had a impressive take on relationships and the first words- repeated words- out of her mouth every time she saw Molly start to sink was 'you couldn't save this if he had already given up.'

She was glad he was gone, but her mind was a damn traitor and had to keep bringing up hidden insecurities that cracked and oozed misery.

That Joe had callously hurled the towel out the window on their being together and there would never have been a thing she would have been able to do to recall his forfeit. He didn't want all of Molly; he didn't want to parse out her attention to other people in her life- breathtakingly rude of him. Joe had hated Sherlock and since she hadn't caved to his pressuring, his 'I will leave if you keep him'- complete and utter horse shit, for anyone curious to know- he turned that jealous blade on her and cut deeply.

Tara had another soul soothing bit to add to that portion, before burying it under a rather familiar morsel of advice.

"_It is a rather brilliant measuring stick, Molls." Tara told her as they ambled slowly down the street toward a corner coffee shop just a bit up the way from St. Bart's. It was a slow, cold, dizzily day and thank goodness Tara had an umbrella because Molly had yet to replace hers as the two hunted for lattes to take the edge off. "Anyone who can't stand our Sherlock should take a hike off the pier with a brick tied to their feet." Wow…_

_Molly snorted. "Our?" This was unprecedented._

_The shorter girl rolled her eyes. "He is such a wart, but he's grown on me in the most annoying and unhealthy ways. I dislike him so much; I've actually turned a corner somewhere and started liking him. A little." She said this with a contorted and confused look about her, as if worried she had contracted some rare disease that nobody ever recovered from._

_Yup, Tara was almost ready to join the Sherlock Bloody Holmes Self Help Group with her and Lestrade. _

_It was scary how easily it was for her to understand where the receptionist was coming from because Sherlock had that affect. If a person could get past his spikey wanker walls- a herculean accomplishment by far- the guy was hard to let go of, in that he took root and thrived. It sounded simple, but speaking from long experience, it really wasn't and Molly knew just how much tenacity was required to truly see him past his coarse exterior. It wasn't that Sherlock didn't want people around- on the contrary, he seemed a bit lost without humanoid activity happening at least near him- but he wasn't a cuddly, warm, individual that encouraged attachment. His standoffishness was probably a self-defense mechanism to keep him safe, to keep him removed from the messy upheavals of social interaction that would, as he put it, 'distract him from what was truly important'. What she translated that as, he sucked at everyday dealings that didn't involve sleuthing out secrets, and the stress of continuous backlash at his verbal beatings- probably unconsciously at first, now purposeful- just wasn't worth it for him anymore. _

_He was tough, but Molly hated thinking about how long it took for him to reach that point of impenetrable thickness. How many times he took a crippling hit before he was able to completely shrug off the sting of rejection to what just came naturally to him. _

_She made it a point to hug him once a month now- the poor bastard. He acted like she was trying mug him for his wallet._

_Molly offered her a consolatory shrug. "Don't let him hear you saying that. He might panic and explode at the threat of more 'female sentimentality'. He already grumbles that I'm bad enough." She was too, but he needed a little girlie interference in the form of senseless chatter by someone he could not scare off with a nasty scowl or bark, and since she was mostly immune, she willing took up that mantel of martyr._

_Tara hummed in thought as she hopped a puddle in a pair of shiny black boots. "Note to self, kiss Sherlock as a last resort if I need to get rid of him for good."_

_Molly felt herself start to lean toward a frown, before realizing what she was doing and groaned. No. _

_Stop it, Hooper._

"_Don't make him cry, Tara. That's just mean." She said instead, wagging a finger at her friend and watched in delight as Tara started giggling uncontrollably. _

"_But seriously, it is a fantastic indicator." Tara said breathlessly, dancing around another large body of brown water the likes of which shoe horror stories were made of. "If a man can't stand Sherlock, then you will know he isn't right for you!"_

_How did that make any sense at all? _

_Blue eyes flickered to her face and Molly blinked at the complete…coyness of it all. "…what?"_

"_It is rather brilliant." Tara's grin was positively leering at this point and Molly felt like she missed something huge. _

"_What is brilliant?" _

"_Sherlock." She said, eyebrows raised as if Molly were supposed to suddenly just get it, which of course she didn't. What about Sherlock? That if a man couldn't like Sherlock, then she shouldn't date him? That was putting an absurd amount of power in the hands of a guy who had no trouble twisting the innocent into knots to get what he wanted and absolutely didn't understand what the phrase 'with great power, comes great responsibility' even meant- granted he had never seen _Spiderman_…and would as soon set fire to the television then watch it. Furthermore, if basing this…brilliancy… off past experience alone, that left Molly with like, two people who passed this 'test'._

_Lestrade- no. _

_Or Wade- no._

_The first because…well…Lestrade was never interested like that. He didn't treat her like a guy intending to ask her out. He treated her like one of the boys: they drank beer, watched football and American football, and ranked the women that passed their seats on a scale of one to ten. Hey, she and Tara had a status system and fairly ogled the stud muffins that worked down in Orthopedics with Wade- much to Wade's 'thrill' she imagined- so fair was beyond fair and she was not remotely offended if Lestrade thought some girl was appropriately 'stacked' or not because chances were she agreed. And second, Wade was dating Tara._

_Pure and simple and end of story._

_Those were the only two men that didn't mind- in the loosest form possible, mind you- Sherlock's presence. So what was so brilliant about Sherlock being the measuring stick for her to-_

…_Oh…she saw it. _

…_dang it, Tara…_

"_Ha ha, not funny." Molly told her. If a man couldn't stand Sherlock, which only a fraction point of the collective population could, that left her with basically the six foot goober himself, being as she had already eliminated the only other two known options._

_Oh, God, the Potential was a problem when Tara tagged in to play. "Oh, but it is." Tara cooed, breath puffing into clouds before them in the frigid December air. "Any man that can't accept that huge part of your life isn't worth having, but that huge part of your life is already a man! You're set for everything but your wedding to Sherlock Holmes!" _

_What!? What. in. bleeding. Tarnation!? "Tara!" Molly flapped her hands urgently at her. "Shhh!" London had ears and Sherlock had a direct uplink to said ears. He could be the town chinwagger and make a hell of a living at it if he wanted too. Shame he thought juicy gossip got in the way of the 'things that truly mattered', like erosion rates on skin tissue and how long an eyeball can be heated before it popped._

_He was pushing even her gross out buttons._

"_I can't 'shhh' about this! This ship practically sails itself!" Tara kept on excitedly as they reached the coffee shop doors. Honestly, Molly could see where the younger girl was coming from after all; she had been a fan long before Sherlock was even tame enough to entertain as a best friend. "Now if only we could catch a glimpse of a hormone in him. God, that'll be like catching a leprechaun, won't it?"_

_Molly wasn't so sure about that- Molly wasn't thinking about it. "Tara, please! I'm getting over Joe right now. I'm not looking at Sherlock for anything but a headache." _

"_Best way to get over one man is to find another." What kind of penny advice was that? Talk about compounding problems into nightmares. They were talking about people! Not puppies!_

"_That was the dumbest thing I've heard all day…and I got to listen to an argument about Hannah Montana's hair color this morning on the tube."_

"_Is it?" Tara asked her suddenly, twisting around and staring at her, blocking the doors to the small establishment without care for circulating patrons. "Is it so stupid to look beyond your recent heartache for your next love?"_

_Love? What- "Tara, think about what you are saying and who you are talking about." Molly told her seriously, desperate to get this very crucial point across. "He is my best friend and I'm barely over the two week mark of 'single for sure'."_

"_I'm not saying to ask him out. I'm saying…let yourself move on." _

_Isn't that what she was doing? "I'm trying." She told her, embarrassingly close to sounding worried, as if she were completely unsure about the validity of that statement._

_Tara just shook her head. "There's no downside to trying a bit more, is there?"_

Hmm…what did it say that Sherlock and Tara had said the same exact thing? Aside from a paradox forming in the group and creating mass anarchy? While the context had been completely different, the idea behind them had the same lineage.

Move on, Molly.

She was not kidding around when she had said she had been trying to do just that. Nobody in their right sodding mind would believe she enjoyed slumping about her days, mediocre in response and barely caring if she had tangles in her hair because her mind was wrestling with other demons. Two weeks was still fresh- granted, every magazine had instructed that she set a limit of precisely one week to pity party before strictly building a bridge and getting over it. Except Molly wasn't that tough and Joe had denied both closure and peace of mind with his silence and avoidance- stupid, sodding, assclown that he was. It had been an unhealthy separation- yet she highly doubted there was such a thing as a fine fettle breakup. They were, by nature, murky, hurtful, and just a minefield of wrong steps and bad arguments it seemed like, and hers had been no different, which did assist in her getting on the road to OVER IT with a bit more spring in her step. Thinking about Joe's negative attacks on Sherlock, and by association herself helped also…actually that was a lie.

They helped a lot.

Molly wasn't happy about people dumping on her, her choices, her character, or even her outfit, but she much preferred that over someone going after her friends, and Sherlock- and Lestrade too, but he seemed a little more robust in her mind against defamations upon his person then Sherlock and Molly did not know _why_- was one area she had never been able to make room for such slander.

Joe had targeted Sherlock- this was unforgiveable and completely intolerable.

Hate it as she did, his little foray into the _Freak_ name calling portion of his evolution before her eyes certainly kept her from _missing_ him.

She hated that she had turned to that ugly, horrible word to help her.

It made her angry.

So angry, in fact, that she put a ban on Anderson and Donovan- preemptive strike- when a case finally rolled in that Lestrade had needed Sherlock's help with.

Because she could not guarantee her composure if Donovan hissed _Freak_ and her hand was still on the mend. A real break was not worth wasting on Donovan and that idiot Anderson.

"_You banned…half my team. Why did you ban half my team?" Lestrade asked in a carefully calm voice as he stood in reception, tapping an agitated finger on the counter as she emerged from the hall. _

_Molly completely ignored the group behind her favored DI. "You called in an expert." _

_Handsome face tight in agitation, Lestrade huffed. "You know I did. He said he'd meet us here." Which was true- Sherlock was currently flapping gleefully around the morgue with an exasperated babysitter in Bernard at the moment. "Molly my team. I need my team." He brought her back to focus on the real problem here._

_She let her eyes finally move past his shoulder to a scowling Donovan. "Yes, well the complete lack of professionalism on that half begs to differ."_

_Lestrade stiffened and she bristled in return, waiting for him to deny-_

"_Lacking professionalism?" Anderson squawked. _

_Donovan sneered. "Excuse me?"_

_Molly didn't rise to them; she stared hard at Lestrade, waiting to see what he would do. It was rare that she made herself such an obstacle, such a nuisance, but for whatever reason that day, she was not allowing Tweedle Dee nor Tweedle Dumb to even breathe in her lab or morgue._

_Not today. Not while Sherlock was down there._

_Lestrade caved, told his crew to head back to Scotland Yard and that he'd not be far behind, before turning and stalking down the hallway without a second glance at her._

If Sherlock had noticed- hard to tell- he had not bothered to comment and spent some fifteen minutes practically swooning over the beauty of an electrocuted corpse- or that's how she thought the guy was killed. Bernard had been handling that case, not her. However, she could tell that just having Lestrade to deal with and not his posse of prats, Sherlock was in a fine mood.

Or that could have been from the fascinating way the body had looked. He was weird. It was really disturbing that it was so hard to tell with him.

What the goofball did pick up on, was how she and the lovely Inspector coolly parted ways after Sherlock forked over the keys to solving the case, which was barely a three but had a 'delicious little twist with the actual death' that could only be ranked as a high nine, and completely explained Sherlock's willingness to be involved.

So weird.

Only her counter inquisition about him eating got her off scot-free with that line of questioning- because she was not comfortable detailing her mission to keep the rats from infesting his happy moments with their crap as he would just be a huge wanker himself and make the situation humiliating on top of highly frustrating. She would rather see him content, and in the zone of intellectual nirvana, than have people trying to say that his methods were beyond despicable or repugnant. That he was a _Freak_ for being slightly off center and way on the mark for solving wicked cases.

He would not be punished for being different. Not now, not ever, if she had it her way.

It was such a crime that Tara all but high jacked these excuses and used them against her, fueling problems…

Fluffing the possibility of the Potential.

Molly refused to allow this 'ship to sail', as Tara put it, since she KNEW for a FACT what would happen. She wasn't stupid, or ignorant, or delusional about the man she called her best friend. If he couldn't even- no.

No.

She was not doing this.

No.

Bad, bad, bad idea. She wouldn't risk it. She couldn't risk it. Sherlock was too important to-

He wasn't a rebound! He wasn't anything!

Years down the line, when she allowed herself to look back, Molly would always ask herself at what point had she started to permit herself to even start looking at her surly six foot companion as possible dating material. At what moment did she look to him and see a prospective partner outside of autopsies and odd science-y stuff? The man who made grown adults throw primary school temper tantrums, who could 'see' everything nobody wanted to share within a few minutes of meeting them- and then proceeding to let them, and all in attendance, know he knew. Yeah, that guy, the one that nicked body parts and drugged animals to cure boredom. The other half to a friendship that she adored, the friendship she cherished for how preciously rare it was. He was so smart and strong and unafraid to do things because somebody might disapprove. He was flawed and grouchy and cared so deeply for that which mattered most to him- of that last part she was absolutely convinced, because Sherlock valued companionship, valued the people in his life to a point most would not believe him capable of. He was rough with her and Lestrade, but she understood it to be from a widespread lack of practice with having friends- not that he referred to either her or the DI as such, but that was old news and nobody cared what he wanted in that respect anyway. He kept her company during long work nights and had maintained stiff tabs on Lestrade when he had eventually returned to work after his stabbing- it was adorable watching her favored copper flounder under such dotting attention cleverly disguised as needy boredom jam-packed with Holmesian superciliousness.

Sherlock couldn't fool her sentimental x-ray vision. He wasn't that slick with his robot act.

All this compounded into a very real, very serious problem concerning her egocentric genius of a best friend.

It had been terrifying.

Absolutely terrifying realizing how easy it would be to simply fall and allow herself to start thinking about him other than platonically. Stupidly easy…

And he wasn't helping her with his fetching suits and tussled hair-

God, she didn't want to deal with this, she didn't want to do this. Not now, not after just breaking up with someone else. It was wrong, it felt horribly wrong.

She wasn't doing it and he was a git that just _had_ to make everything difficult because nothing was ever easy with him.

He was far from unattractive…if he kept his trap shut that is, as the view was rather arresting- tall, dark, and cranky apparently had some universal appeal because Sherlock showed up to the lab in a new shirt, and Queen Bee Tara spent arduous amounts of time creeping on him when not arguing with him. Kudos had to be given to…anyone, because Sherlock somehow managed to miss the appreciative audience altogether, the blind old goat.

Dark blue was so his color…and Molly about ran from the lab when she spotted Tara lurking. She could handle her…issues…but the second she saw another all but encouraging the fanfare, it became too much. A hasty excuse for crappy coffee- black with two sugars, sir, yessir!- was enough and she was booking it down to the lounge with a cackling Tara at her heals the entire way snickering about popping buttons.

She needed a distraction, something to separate the normal from the insanity in her life. Christmas was mere weeks away and for whatever reason, even that wasn't enough to keep her mind from wandering into the lethal territory of 'what if' land.

No. No. Aaannnd no.

She could like him and it would be so easy and she was more than determined to fight this, to rage against this…Potential, as hard as she could until she would never feel anything for him outside the love one feels for a dear friend.

She would lose him if she started to look at him as anything else. She would get hurt- way worse than anything Joe could possibly do because he was a tool and Sherlock had been hers for years as opposed to barely six months- she would fall from heights so great, she would bleed, and break and she would be driven to hate him, and Molly Hooper didn't hate anyone or anything as her mother had taught her at a very young age. However, she had seen the _Lifetime_ movies, she knew all the outcomes and not one of them favored victory in this situation.

More importantly- most importantly- she knew the man. She'd have to be viciously murdered in blatant obfuscation for him to turn that level of interest on her person- which she would rather not happen as that would be most self-defeating.

And it had been pointless speculation as she did not dwell on such matters to begin with.

In a desperate bid to either distract herself, or punish herself, Molly had called her sister to get a removed opinion. She seriously didn't have enough to think about- no wonder Sherlock spun himself into bratty hysterics when this happened to him and that massive brain of his. It was awful.

The call was short, and Molly's confusion was rapidly replaced with antsy anticipation. Big sis had arrived in London for a few nights as the delegation she worked for stopped over for a visit on their way back to the States, and as soon as she tidied up some last minute business, she was coming for Molly.

_-"We're going out."_

"_Aren't you tired?"_

"_Jet lag will be worse if I crash now. My internal clock is some seven hours behind me in Asia somewhere. I don't have a lot of free time so we are doing this."_

"_I'd be happy to come out to the offices-"_

"_God, no! They won't leave us alone here! Peter is down with a case of food poisoning and I'm footing a portion of his work load. I told him to avoid the iffy sushi."_

"_Well…where would you like to go?"_

"_I have tickets to the _Nutcracker_- shut up! Ambassador Rupert didn't want them. The man has exquisite taste in music, but would rather eat suspicious fish rolls himself then spend hours at a play. No patience for them. He's like mum, who also bowed out by the way."_

"_Ouch. What time?"_

"_Let's get dinner first. I'll be out of here in about forty five minutes."_

'Let's get dinner first' was code for drinking copious amounts of wine. A little libation would be heavily appreciated and needed if the Hooper sisters were off to the _theee-athah _for the _Nutcracker_. Plays really weren't her, or her sister's, cup of tea but time was preciously short spent together and Molly would happily mosey about the rubbish dump on a hot day if it meant spending some time with big sis.

A text about a half hour later let her know exactly where they were going and that Molly would need the big guns in the closet if she were going to pass muster. The Ritz was…It was not what she would have picked, but hey, to each their own and all that- it was already a planned outing for Ambassador Rupert so she wasn't horribly surprised she would have to dust off her evening best for a simple dinner and a show with her soon to be buzzed sister.

If only this hadn't been a 'working' get together, Molly would have been much happier about that- but her sister was always on the clock, even during social hour.

She could remember how hopeful she had been; something different, something new, and her sister too.

It should have been perfect or at least not horribly horrible as big sis and she had perfected the art of having fun in all situations.

Molly was getting real sick of Life's shit throwing.

_Gathering wits and courage from every area she could spare, Molly eventually had to accept that her smart black cocktail dress would have to do- because this dress would reveal a lot of leg. _

_A lot of scarred leg._

_She needed hosiery- hell no was she strutting into the Ritz dining room with a pink roadmap of London zig sagging up the back of her calves, thighs, and the part of her back where her dress dipped. For an opportunity to have a night with her sister, she would tolerate any embarrassment, but there were some things she just didn't like having people stare at- the scars on her legs, her back, her fingers and the jagged thing on the spine of her hand. For the first time since fracturing her thumb, she wished she didn't have her obnoxiously blue cast as it rather didn't go with anything in her wardrobe. _

_God…this is was already awkward and she hadn't even put her shoes on…_

_She was like a parts car- barely held together by luck and the rust separating the dented bits from each other._

_Deep breath, Hooper. _

_A ping from her phone while she was selecting bright blue earrings to go with her cast- hey, she couldn't hide it, might as well accessorize with it- let her know that her ride was waiting for her outside and Molly exhaled slowly before slipping into a pair of borrowed black heels- thanks to Tara. This evening would have been brilliant without the stress of a Michelin three star restaurant where formal attire was a must. Her sister was a big fan of Burger King so this was like…an out of body experience where the poor fool was dropped into the fire-y pit of snobbish Hell. _

_Or so big sis said._

_Oh, Lord have mercy on her soul._

_Plucking her black clutch- another Tara loan- up off her chest of drawers, Molly slipped her phone and altered wallet into its shallow depths and obsessively checked her image once more in her floor length mirror, making sure her pea coat didn't clash anywhere too horrendously, before treading out into the hallway- and nearly panicking as she forgot her keys._

_She was NOT locking herself out as Sherlock had yet to deign giving her lock picking lessons, the turd. He kept saying he was too busy as he stared off into space last week for two hours. She had come to terms with him just being flat out lazy._

_The second she stepped out of her building and saw a black sedan crouching at the curb, Molly had to take pause and re-evaluate the situation on a personal level. It was like a fudging Pavlovian response to seeing these cars now and synonymously linking them to a Holmes brother, but the face that greeted her when the door was kicked open was pure Hooper and Molly couldn't swallow the squeal of delight as she hopped off the stoop upon seeing a beloved sibling after so long._

"_Oh, my GOD! Molly!" Big sis cried, tugging her into a tight hug as she leaned out of the door of the car with her knees still on the seat. "You look fantastic!"_

_Molly squeezed her extra tight, laughing. "So do you! The States have been good to you!"_

"_I've gained fifteen pounds."_

_A bubbly giggle had her admitting her own woes. "I've gained ten and lost one tosser. I think I win."_

_Her sister rolled her eyes as she pulled Molly further into the car. "Puh-leeze, that is a gift horse we will not be looking in the mouth. Joe is gone- good riddance. Let's go get smashed and watch a nut cracker."_

"_The _Nutcracker_." Molly corrected and snickered at her sisters exasperated eye roll. _

"_Whatever it's called, I do not care. We could be seeing a hobo circus and I'd be fine with that…actually I'd prefer that. I'm not really in the zone for fine cuisine and cultured entertainment." Said the woman whose very life revolved around high circles and powerful people. Molly's sister was the ultimate chameleon when it came to work and her job as she pulled polished, sophistication off without a hitch and had professional dexterity down to a fine tuned machine. She could speak some seven or nine different languages fluently and could limp rather convincingly in another two- that Molly knew of as her sister picked new languages up as easily as she did books- but in the comfort of family, she morphed into a right slob that wouldn't even change out of her pajama bottoms unless absolutely necessary, ate frozen pizzas and watched just as much crap telly as Molly did._

_As was Hooper tradition._

_Molly could speak the Queen's English…and knew precisely enough French to be looked down on as a hick, while showcasing all the other closed door qualities her sister had beautifully to anyone who met her. Her talent had aligned more with awkward and science, while her sister had a silver tongue and the ability to mingle without problem. _

_Polar opposites in almost every way professionally, they came together in support of repulsive _Hallmark Holiday_ movies, junk food, and eighties and nineties pop music among many other things._

"_When was the last time you had to eat with more than one fork at a setting?" Big sis asked as she sprawled out unladylike beside her as she reluctantly checked the small super computer in her hands._

_This question would have been comical if Molly wasn't about to come face to face with several of them, all demanding proper usage over the course of their meal. "Uh...never…" Did the movie _Titanic _count?- Hey, Sherlock may have bitched about the soundtrack, but she could hardly suppress the weepy sappage long enough to get home and unearth her DVD and slap it into the player. _

"_No worries. It'll just be us anyway. Ambassador Rupert isn't one for large group meals." She told her as she tapped out a response to something. "Also, I'm sorry about being on this thing." She wiggled the black device that looked like it meant some serious business. "I'm on call as Peter is still out of commission." She sighed dramatically. "Fish is not meant to be consumed raw. That's why fire was invented."_

"_Well, food poisoning isn't an hour fix, you know. It takes a good day or two to pass through the system." Molly told her, feeling strongly like she was talking to a shade of Sherlock's infamous impatience. _

_What a disturbing thought. _

"_Such an inconvenience." The elder Hooper grumbled before galloping off, asking questions and teasing her about mum and work, and doing a bloody fantastic job not discussing everything Molly wanted to talk about with her older sister. She needed direction, advice, or a cure all for packing up her baggage and leaving it behind her, but despite this, Molly really couldn't complain._

_She had missed having the unconditional loyalty and support of a fellow sibling; she had missed the boundless love and the rough encouragement._

_She had missed her sister._

_Appreciating that the night was very young, and that a little wine might go a long way in loosening the tongue, Molly rolled with the topics, giggling at the 'compliments' to her cast and jewelry and outright laughing at stories about the linguist's last trip to North Korea and how the countries diminutive potbellied pig of a dictator had taken a 'shine' to her. The poor bastard. He was mightily lucky that the elder Hooper sibling was merely a conduit of communicative politics and not a real player herself because men were stupid for a pretty face. Put a brain behind said pretty face, and regimes would crumble. _

_Why couldn't Molly have been born with the pretty face? Her sister had the full lips and the cute figure. It was like looking at the bull's eye some hair's width away and knowing that it could have so easily been her._

_But nooo, she had gobbled up all the 'near miss' genes in the womb super early and left the desirable traits with her egg brethren. _

_What a weird position on things…_

_The car ride had been the calm before the storm, Molly knew this, and because of where they were going- in Ambassador Rupert's stead- she was not going to be comfortable in her own skin let alone a lavish dining room. The Ritz London was the very emption of high-class- at least in her mind. When a person is told that formal attire is the only standard upon which one will be allowed to enter, let alone dine, it sends huge, red flags skyrocketing into the atmosphere so even socially inactive folks know 'here be salted fish eggs on a platter that people don't really enjoy but consume anyway because that's what rich people do'. _

"_Try and relax," Her sister told her, immediately noticing her distress. "It'll be different but nobody is grading you so don't worry."_

_Says the woman who looks at this sort of thing as just another day at the office. Impromptu pizza parties in a lab affixed to a busy morgue with Sherlock and Tara was practically a polar opposite to the Ritz. Molly bet she would be banned completely if the patrons and managers knew she sometimes put her feet up to eat. "Do I look okay?" She fussed, feeling the plaster weight of her cast all too keenly and the smooth texturing to her acid marred fingers gripping at her clutch as the car turned onto Piccadilly. _

"_Molly," she called to her, "You look wonderful. This is supposed to be different and fun- not to mention free. I want you to have a good time and if this is just not going to work, we'll go and hit up the McDonalds on Victoria…unless there has been an opening closer to where we are now." Her sister told her, looking up from her phone and watching her without expectation. "It's so your call."_

_The car started to slow, and Molly's breath hitched as she peaked out the window and saw the façade to the hotel. The Ritz…how many opportunities would she get to have like this? Inhaling, Molly steeled her resolve and nodded. "Let's do this."_

"_Thatta girl!" _

_That resolve lasted maybe all of five seconds after stepping into the grand foyer, and Molly became suddenly aware of how much she did not belong in these marbled and gilded halls. She was used to subway tiled walls with drains in the floor, and overhead lighting that was brightened beyond reason to catch even the most subtle of off colored peculiarities. The only thing in her life that might have been at home here was Sherlock and that was just image alone. He'd probably trample the delicate floral arrangement in the grand foyer just to watch the upper crust of society burn in their over starched collard indignation._

_Her sister, dressed in something very similar to her own black cocktail dress, glided toward a man in a sharp tux just as he noticed he had been zeroed in on. Big sis was anything but timid in trying situations- that was Molly's specialty- so she kept to her heels and tried to not feel so out of place. Even when the woman wearing enough diamonds to blind a small congregation floated past her in shimmery Valentino dress she just managed to recognize from the latest issue of _Vogue_ or _Elle_. She couldn't remember which specifically…_

_It wasn't important beyond that the poundage forked out for such a lovely gown could have funded the local homeless shelter for a good few years. _

_Molly didn't begrudge people for earning a lot or being rich, after all, many had worked themselves into the ground to be successful and they deserved to spoil themselves when they chose too- hell, she would. She'd buy all sorts of useless junk just to have it, like shoes for all occasions, so she knew she would be no better about it…but watching someone dress to impress…just for the sake of doing so…it seemed like such a waste when it was cold outside and Molly had noticed the uptick in homeless around St. Bart's- she had bought some two dozen taco's from the roving taco wagon that Sherlock had gotten them both banned from what seemed like forever ago using a homeless accomplice. The owner glared at her immediately, his memory unadulterated from months ago, and wouldn't accept her patronage till she shyly asked a man, hanging out near the mouth of an alley that was blatantly homeless, to help her. So she had purchased enough to get back on the vendor's good graces, as well as dinner for the man and a few of his cardboard compatriots. _

_They weren't pets; she had to remind herself continuously. They had feelings too and she would not demoralize them with her misplaced charity, but having that guy help her get her lunch took some of the poison out of the gesture. _

_Her sister was motioning for her, and she blinked at her evident gaping of the glitzy woman. She was hanging around that rude Sherlock a bit too much, as staring was never polite- something he did ALL the time, mind you. Pacing closer, Molly watched as the linguist slash political aide slipped from her dark blue coat with the help of another tuxedoed helper. Aware of someone behind her, Molly checked once to make sure it was her own dashing assistant and not the Prime Minster before shucking as gracefully as her cast would allow her from her own coat. A hysterical giggle worked its way up her throat at the impressive splendor of it all and Molly quickly swallowed it, staring hard at her sister who also seemed highly amused._

_Together, they were led into the heart of the dining hall, and my, did she feel like a scruffy peasant. Soft textured creams, reds and accenting gold made the place feel warm and welcoming despite the low din of graciously spaced tables, allotting for privacy in this very public place. The chandeliers glinted and winked off the mirrors and the tinkling of cutlery off bone china just added to the lavish surroundings that many a fine lady and gentleman partook without hesitation. _

_Their table was situated near the center, and Molly felt like she were a player on stage as the feeling of eyes followed her- granted, anywhere she went where people were predominantly sitting gave her this nagging hunch…whether it was actually true or not. _

_She just hated it a lot more since her foray into the public circles on the supermarket rags. _

"_Ambassador Rupert prefers quiet dinners. This was a gift from a colleague in Parliament, but he had to cancel as his wife took ill. Rupert suggested I take the reservations seeing as they were already bought and paid for." Her sister uttered to her, taking a seat that was also pushed in by a set of waiter people. "Don't worry, Rupert has a very universal palate and there will not be anything on the preselected menu that should turn you off."_

_Molly bobbed her head, infinitely more at ease now that they were seated. "This is…the ambience here is extraordinary."_

"_Very much so." Her sister said, before sighing and tugging out her phone. "I am sorry about this stupid thing. The only upside is that I can drink because these sorts of places are conveniently left off the rule book." She explained, pulling up her phone and doing a double take._

"_Problem?" Molly asked, taking a sip from her water glass._

_Her sister lifted her head and looked around. "Er…not for me."_

_Before she could question this, the linguist settled her dark eyes on something over Molly's shoulder with an unimpressed frown- or as close to one as she could get entombed in this palace of opulence and still remain well-mannered. Molly, was turning to follow her look, but froze a second before completing it as a voice she knew a bit too well greeted them both._

"_Ah, how fortuitous this evening is turning out to be with not one, but two Hooper sisters poised to dine."_

_Molly barely managed stomp out her curse of surprise. Eyes zipping around to take in one Mycroft Holmes, dressed in a three piece suit so sharp he could cut steak. On his arm was a stately, older woman swathed in a deep puce evening gown with only a simple opal necklace and matching earrings as her trimmings. Both were standing bold as day at the side of their table, obviously halting in their progression to their own reservation for a chance to chat. Chat being used loosely here, as in her limited but impressed experience, Mycroft Holmes didn't so much as chat but lecture when he chose to speak with commoners. Very much like his brother in that regard and Molly very nearly lost an ear to decay when she had pointed that out to Sherlock._

_It was her very own Holmes War of Attrition getting these two to see their similarities. One she was determined to triumph at because it so, ridiculously, obvious._

_Sherlock had a cow when she told him that he saw, but he did not observe this matter very well._

_She had thought herself rather clever, and really, it wasn't her fault he was so easy to tease. Sherlock sulked and was testy for two days._

_Git._

_Molly's eyes fluttered as she realized she had been staring, and then flushed at how poor her manners were in that moment. Luckily, her sister was never left wanting in these situations- not that Molly had ever experienced one like this before- as she flawlessly returned his greeting. "Why, Mr. Holmes, what a pleasure and a surprise it is to see you this evening." A surprise, yes. A pleasure…not remotely._

_How the hell did her sister know Mycroft Holmes anyway? "Yes, My- Mr. Holmes. I had no idea we would have the luck of your presence tonight as well." Her slip hopefully wasn't too obvious. Man, she sucked at this polite conversing stuff…_

_Judging by the crinkling of not one, but two sets of sharp eyes, Molly's hopes were dashed in vain upon the rocks of social faux pas. _

_Bugger._

"_Mycroft." The older woman finally spoke, turning her head toward the man, but never removing her eyes from Molly. "You must introduce us."_

_A slight rippling of his features was enough, but just barely, for Molly to catch his spasm of discomfort because it was the exact same flavor as his brother's when things took him by surprise, as rarely as such events occurred. "My apologies. This is Katherine Hooper, a top linguist and translator for several U.S. ambassadors and oft times the Secretary of State and Vice President, and her younger sister, Molly Hooper, the assistant Head to the City's Pathologist at St. Bartholomew's, not to mention favored Forensic Pathologist to New Scotland Yard and the MET….as well as Sherlock."_

_As impressive and…wordy…as that introduction was- and she had noted easily how he made her humble little occupation seem a lot more substantial to go along with her sister's heftier job description- it was that last bit about Sherlock that seemed to tip the scales, making Molly herself the vastly more interesting of the two for the older woman before her. This was a first…_

_And terribly concerning. _

_Mycroft wasn't finished speaking, however. "Ladies, my I introduce you to mother, Violet Holmes."_

_Oh…my…God…_

_No way…_

_Mother! Holy shit- "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ma'am." She heard her sister say distantly, and Molly parroted something similar as well, mind too fogged with shock to do more than yank her eyes up to Mycroft and put her smile on autopilot._

_Mycroft's mother! SHERLOCK's mother!_

_No freaking way!_

_Oh, my God, she was looking at ground zero! The event horizon of all that made Sherlock and Mycroft who they were! The woman- or mini dynamo- that brought these two infuriatingly brilliant men into the world! The person who raised them! Oh, hell, what must she be like? Sherlock was an acid trip of a man and Mycroft not far behind! _

_Did she have the Gift too? _

_What was she supposed to say?! _

_Oh, Lord, she could already hear a half hysterical version of herself saying 'So… the mother to the man that belts the dead cadavers in my lab with golf clubs, eh? Nice to meet you!'._

"_So you're the girl that has taken a shine to my Sherlock? Mycroft, dear, we need a larger table. I insist these two join our party." The small woman that truly looked nothing like either man turned and ordered up at her towering son. "I may never get this chance again, seeing as how secretive Sherlock is about such things."_

_What was happening? Molly, still rocked from this unexpected turn of events, twisted her head back to look at her sister, who had a baffled expression etched onto her own face. What the heck? _

_Dinner with Sherlock's mommy… _

_Strange how she couldn't tell if she was being punished for something._

_Mycroft seemed a little off kilter tonight as well as he turned his attention to her. "Would this be an imposition for you ladies? I would hate to break whatever dinner plans you might-"_

"_Oh, nonsense, it is dinner. Their dates are welcome too." Violet stepped easily around his attempt at giving his mother's victims an out, and this had to be the first time Molly had ever seen anyone outside of his squirrely brother interrupt Mycroft. His family was casually unconcerned about insulting this man…as it should be._

_Molly surprised herself when she spoke up, just managing to catch a mere flicker of resignation before it was paved over in social indifference in Mycroft that she had also seen magnified on his baby brother in the past during equally trying situations where being a huge git just simply wouldn't do. Rare as that was…_

_What were the odds she was going to severely regret this? "Actually, ma'am, we are just here by ourselves. We were planning on attending a play this evening after dinner, but I do not see how that could possibly be imposed upon by a variance in dinner arrangements, isn't that right?" She twisted to look back at her sister, who dipped her head in agreement. Molly hoped she wasn't stepping on her toes…or Mycroft's, but this woman was pushy- like Sherlock- and there wasn't room to make a scene over the simple location of a meal. A true Holmes, even if by marriage. _

_Heaven help them all._

"_It would be a delight, ma'am." The linguist smile amiably. "But you must excuse me my unavoidable usage of the phone. I'm terribly sorry, but I am on call and time is short between Molly and myself. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to come out tonight."_

"_Oh, that is quite alright, dear. Yes, quite alright. I understand the unforgiving nuances expected of political assistances." Mummy Holmes consented at once. Molly was fairly certain she would have agreed to just about anything short of group streaking to get her and her sister to dine with them as the older woman had that _look_ about her. It was startling to see how much of Sherlock she was able to glean from such a short time in her flaring presence. Mycroft, the unfortunate sod, dutifully turned to the shadowing man in yet another tuxedo to arrange the new seating expectations while Violet ushered for Molly and her sister to climb to their feet, with the help of yet more wait staff. Those guys were like culinary service ninjas with the way they disappeared and reappeared on her radar, granted her radar was pretty shoddy and even large things tended to become obscure if she weren't focusing properly._

_Like cadaver limbs or the occasional head._

_Molly smiled, unsure, as Violet Holmes quickly took her arm, never once losing the air of the lady in charge, despite Mycroft doing all the negotiating. It was strange watching this powerful man bend for the will of another. She speculated on the likelihood of Sherlock being susceptible to the same demands and came up inconclusive. Sherlock never made anything easy, but his mother made for the unknown variable this time around. She could see him going either way, and she wasn't delusional in thinking location meant anything to him. The Ritz, in all its tradition and rules and expectations would not stop Sherlock from throwing a spectacular fit if someone tried to force him into doing something he would rather not do, ever._

_Giant baby._

_Soon, and upon a mother's adamant insistence, Mycroft was escorting her older sister toward another room where the tables were much larger and the hall, just a bit more of a show stopper. The luxuriousness was not enough to distract her, however, as Molly was very conscious of the person at her elbow, and tried to keep from wobbling in her heels- they were barely two and a half inch heels, conservative for Tara, but Molly just wasn't used to them and now was not the time or place to test gravity's self-assured hold on her poise. _

_Their new table easily held twelve people and Molly worked to keep from asking if it was truly necessary as there were only four of them. "We are meeting some family friends, ladies. I do hope you do not mind." Mycroft told them as he held out her sister's chair for her. _

"_The more the merrier." Big sis said smoothly, brown eyes snapping in annoyance at discovering how far away Molly was as she took her seat. Promptly, and noiselessly, she sank her verbal fangs into poor Mycroft the second he took his own chair in what Molly could only assume was retaliation for separating them without her express written consent. Molly would have watched longer- how often did miracles like this happen?- if Mother Holmes wasn't turning her head to see what had enraptured her attention so completely, so she scrambled to hold the older woman's focus, somehow feeling that any discord would not be well received._

"_If you would, ma'am-" Molly started mind racing for a suitable topic, still hesitant to speak in case she miss-stepped and offended Sherlock's mother. The risk was great, and she did not want to jinx herself resulting in Detective Dickhead putting in extra hours in an attempt to get her cranium to detonate all over the lab walls. _

"_Call me Violet, love. Ma'am is far too distancing for the woman who smiles upon my difficult, youngest son." She simpered demurely and Molly shivered as if someone stepped over her grave. She sounded warm and affectionate, but the way she held herself was…almost reptilian, as if waiting for Molly to stumble so she could make her move._

_Whatever move that may be._

_Things…were starting to form a picture here. "…Violet," She corrected slowly, "What exactly does Mr. Holmes…er…Mycroft do?" She cringed at her pitiable wording. She so wasn't used to the ultra-polite dance of social concord. She dealt with Sherlock after all, and he was convinced such prattle would be the death of intelligent discussion- he also turned grammar Nazi in a heartbeat so there was still no winning to be had with him. He got his panties in such a tangle over her using pleasantries with him, as if 'Hello, Sherlock, nice day so far?' would confound the gray matter to near detrimental levels, causing him to sink to Anderson like planes of fatuity._

_He sabotaged her for these moments! She knew this. Years of rewiring her programming so she could stumble into the deadlier of the Holmes gender unaware and unprepared._

_That wanker!_

"_He holds a minor position in the Government. Or, at least that is what he'll tell anyone who asks. In actuality, he is just as important as an elected official, but without the people's say on whether he retains his job. Almost more…covert like, as opposed to nominated figurehead." Violet explained smoothly, indicating for a fresh pot of tea from one of the many waiters rotating their table, straightening and adjusting for their newest assignment. _

_A truly horrifying insight. A Holmes brother was partially at the wheel of a machine as huge as the U.K.!_

_Sweet Merciful Jesus! The more she dwelt on this new bit of information, the worse it got. "O-oh. I h-had no idea." She cleared her throat, trying to mask her disconcerted shudder. She needed a drink._

_Violet must have seen it, because her cold eyes crinkled around the edges and she grinned. "Now, now. He isn't nearly as rambunctious as my baby boy."_

_Baby boy…God, Molly was laboring to pin this woman down in her mind so she could attempt to see what she was dealing with. Molly barely had a sound description down of the older woman. If someone asked, she'd probably just whimper pitifully. "No, no. I didn't mean- when I've asked Sherlock, he usually gives…forgive me." Molly gave up, eyes skittering to her sister, who was locked in a rather heated debate, whispering furiously to an unruffled Mycroft. No help there. Sucking in a quick breath, Molly decided to come as clean as she could. "You will have to forgive my rough manners, Mrs. Holmes. I am not used to this sort of thing at all. In fact…I'm more apt to bickering and arguing then polite word play, I'm sad to tell you."_

"_Do not fret, love." Violet stunned her as she reached out and patted her acid eaten hand. "I don't expect Windsor quality politeness from anyone who rubs shoulders so familiarly with Sherlock. He has rather fought that subtle social art his entire life."_

_Oh, thank God. She knows it too, so Molly was more than willing to overlook the jab at her manners. Hey, the truth hurt and this woman was a Holmes. It came with the territory at this point, sans explanations. "He does get rather opinionated about it."_

"_Yes, you will have to make allowances for him." Violet told her, meeting her brown eyes with a hauntingly familiar pair that calculated her every move, every infliction. A pair she had seen watch, stare, and glare at her for the last three years in various degrees of intensity. _

"_He has your eyes." Molly blurted, and then felt her face and neck flood with heat. Smooth, Molly… _

_Violet, however, seemed to preen at this news, but before a response could be had, their numbers increased with the arrival of the rest of their impromptu dinner party._

_Molly was really wishing she had just said yes to McDonalds at this point. _

"_Well, now, what do we have here?" A young, rather handsome looking bloke said, coming to a stop beside Mycroft, who had to break from the abuse her sister was hurling at him and stood to shake hands with him._

"_Mr. Wilkes, what a pleasure." He said, and Molly couldn't tell if he meant it or not because he certainly didn't act like it was such a pleasing prospect to be sharing a meal with the new arrival. Apparently nobody was pleased as punch about the night's sequence of unfolding events. This Mr. Wilkes then proceeded to bump his cheek against Momma Holmes and nod his head at her sister and herself. Their chattering soon devolved into more greetings from the five other people with this man; each paying homage to Mycroft and ritually engaging in faire la bise with Mrs. Holmes. Molly counted three men and three women, all in sharp suits or stately gowns that she bet were designer just by the cut of the shoulders and the drape of fabric alone. Her Lipsy bargain brand cocktail dress was probably horribly offensive at this point, as her favorite consulting detective so genteelly pointed out once when she wore another dress from the same shop to work for a Board meeting. Sherlock had impeccable taste in clothes, and had taught her thing or two about, not only clothes in general, but a man and his suit and what message they were trying to convey. All because she thought Chris Hemsworth cut a fine line in his dapper attire and she had the audacity to say so out loud. Sherlock just couldn't hold his tongue- genetically impossible- as he pointed out the flaws. Her refusal to accept this logic resulted into a rant about men's formal wear that somehow managed to stick- the tosser, he kept touching his damn chest and arms as he explained, stretching the fabric of his button down until buttons pulled and she was an idiot. If he had been wearing red that day, she might have burst a vessel. She now could identify three different styles of suits alone and where they came from. This did not include the tuxedo._

_Mycroft, ever the efficient man, waited until everyone was prepared to claim, or reclaim, their seats to do introductions. He blathered some nonsense- that she didn't believe for a second- about being pleased to see everyone and Molly deliberated on if she had ever been more uncomfortable in her entire life while the new arrivals kept giving her and her sister looks, as if questioning the validity of their being seated amongst them. Big sis just gazed back, a small benign smile gracing her full lips, but Molly could tell her shields were up. _

_Molly couldn't even tell if she, herself, had armor strong enough for this sort of thing. The delicate dance of propriety was a world away from the loud, colorful arguments and debates that she partook in with Lestrade, Sherlock, Tara, and Wade. She could navigate just fine in average waters. She knew the rules of engagement there._

_Here…it was a whole new ball game._

_Who were these people to her anyway, and why was she suddenly agonizing over what they even thought about her as a person? _

"_- Katherine Hooper, and her younger sister, Molly Hooper who is the top Forensic Pathologist for St. Bartholomew's Hospital and Research Center." Mycroft's even toned voice- nowhere near as deep and dark as Sherlock's lovely baritone- intruded on her thoughts, giving Molly just enough time to smile and cant her head simultaneously with her sister. "Ladies, these are friends and close associates to the family, Sebastian Wilkes, an investment banker from-" _

_Molly just offered polite dips to each new person, not even trying to remember who they were, as that was definitely not one of her talents. She would spend the rest of her meal deliberately trying to avoid using their names if she could help it- she never planned on seeing these people again being that any patron of the Ritz restaurant was in a league she would most likely never run in, and she was completely okay with that. _

_The harsh looking woman seated directly across from her was barely withholding the sneer as she eyeballed Molly's near fluorescent blue wrist cast. Excuse you, lady! It was a cast, not a thrift store bracelet…even if she harmonized her jewelry pieces with it. Thank God Cruella over there couldn't see the scar on her hand. That would probably have drawn an even bigger gape and warrant to comment, which would lead to-_

"_- and last, but not least, Colin Dunn, a respected attorney from Hauptman, Wolfe, and Dunn at Law." _

_Molly felt the blood drain from her face as the name struck a chord with her. It couldn't be…_

_She darted wide eyes over to the last man, the one closest to her seated position, to see him the moment he noticed she realized who exactly he was. His devastatingly good looking face split into a knowing smile of perfect white teeth, glinting brown eyes raking her as he downloaded everything he could from her demeanor and reaction. _

_No…_

_Please, no…_

_She retained just enough mental coherency to offer a stiff, acknowledging grimace before he chose to break the ice, so to speak. "Molly Hooper, why isn't this quite the surprise? I was not expecting to see you here tonight." His voice was as smooth as she remembered it all those months ago, raised to be heard amongst the jury as he argued for his client, Boris Little's, life._

_Her voice sounded foreign, even to her own ears. "Likewise, Mr. Dunn." _

_He seemed charmed by her rejoinder and that grated with something deep in her gut. "Aw, come now. No hard feelings, Molly. I was merely representing a client in the court of law. Hardly grounds for condemning a man hired to do a job."_

_Molly was at a loss. On one hand, she wanted to tell him to piss right off and be done with him, on the other, this guy had nearly argued her attacker to liberty and could she really just ignore that?_

_She wasn't sure how 'forgiving' a soul she was, but playing 'nice' with the lawyer that nearly bought Boris Little his freedom was not something she felt like doing._

_Ever._

"_Well Mr. Dunn," She enunciated his name, letting him know his familiarity was not remotely appreciated. "I am well acquainted with the justice system, so you will just have to live with any acrimonious feelings on the subject of our last encounter, as it was far from a picnic." She told him bluntly, ignoring the captured audience surrounding them. Yup, first conversation out of the starting block was her and the blood sucking lawyer._

_What a lovely way to introduce herself. _

"_I second that, Mr. Dunn. Your ghoulish duty has been taken very much into account in this particular instance." Her sister's voice was like bell from across the table and Molly felt something her chest unclench as she saw nothing but support from that sector; a pure showing of solidarity in this increasingly hostile environment. Molly, as hard as it was to ignore, did not relish causing a scene here as good manners had been bred into her by a mother- her mum wasn't at fault for where those manners had buggered off to recently, so no blame could be heaped upon her shoulders- who frowned upon outbursts in public, but seeing her sister's near aggressive bearing gave her the courage to hold her ground, even if this meal turned out to be the most uncomfortable ever to be had by a distinctly English group of people, all of whom were watching this volley with dignified distaste. _

_Mycroft was busy taking a nip from a brandy glass, but the eyes that flashed toward her were unreadable_ _and Molly carefully did not look to her side to see what his mother might be feeling. She just scrunched her own at the political pest, meeting his heavy regard pound for pound. Sherlock wouldn't care and it was his opinion, out of all the Holmes family, that truly mattered to her._

_Sherlock would probably be making the situation worse about now. Where was he when she needed him?_

_Probably having a bloody good time doing…whatever it was he did with his free time._

_Lucky jerk…_

"_I was wondering why he was so dogged in his agglomerating of all potential evidence." Dunn smirked, clearly enjoying this argumentative atmosphere like the fudging lawyer that he was. "The reputation that precedes you down at the Yard denoted an obscenely loyal associate. Detective Inspector Lestrade was most unpleasant during the entire affair as he scarcely kept him within the confines of barely inimical."_

_She didn't need to ask to which 'he' or 'him' Dunn was referring and a warm rush of affection for her boys had Molly offering up the first real smile to this meddlesome man. "The feeling…is deeply mutual, I assure you." Was all she said into the bloating silence that swelled amongst the group, uncomfortable and thick. If these people did not need an introduction to each other, then they knew what sort of cases Dunn had taken…and if they were smart enough, they could connect the dots and draw a conclusion as to how she fit into this whole shebang._

_It was like a never ending problem and she was tossed back several months to a time where dodging questions had become her second fulltime occupation. _

_This time, however, she was determined not to care. She was fighting with herself to apologize to the group at large for such an antagonistic outward display of belligerence as such things were not appropriate, but she wouldn't mean it. She would never mean one word of it, and she was constantly reminded about how awful she was at lying. So she stiffened her lip and held her head high, just like her mother had told her._

_This group- aside from Violet Holmes because she was Sherlock's mommy- could take a collective hike off a short cliff. Mycroft too, that turd. He was too smart for her to assume he had no prior knowledge of Dunn and the likelihood of bruised feelings- not bruised, destroyed. Molly would not bother trying to like the man that used her defense of acid to save her own skin as a ploy to make Little the victim in his own crime. She usually gave folks the benefit of the doubt, but holy cow, so not happening tonight._

_No._

_There was a huff of laughter from her elbow and Molly's eyes snapped to the side of their own volition to see Violet Holmes chortling, a pair of steely blues, just a shade darker than her son's, fairly sparkle in her amusement as she leaned in. "I can see why he has kept you now." Was all she said, and once again, Molly was left feeling like there was more of an insult in that statement than anything else._

_And because she was on a roll, Molly bent toward the older woman and lowered her voice. "Again, ma'am, the feeling is mutual." She told her, desperate to ignore the zing of panic at basically forcing her opinion on the mother of her irritatingly prickish best friend._

_Cold, pale, eyes warmed and Molly's eyebrows started to climb, the ire in her seeping out as the expression on the woman before her melted. "Good." Was all she said, effectively throwing Molly, as the wait staff descended on the table, taking orders for drinks and courses like a swarm of busy bees._

_All an all, the night was turning into one big pain in the arse. She was isolated from her sister, who kept staring at her as if the force of her regard would teleport her to Molly or vice versa. Mycroft was being particularly useless in fending off the prying bastards surrounding her- Dunn the Wanker- and Mummy Holmes was gearing up for her own take on the Spanish Inquisition into the life of her youngest, and most antisocial son's self-anointed best friend. All this was on top of a worried inexperience ordering from a menu with no prices and terrible inkling that she was being judged for whatever she planned to select._

_This was ridiculous. _

_Picking the easiest to solve of her collection of problems, she listened close to what Mycroft ordered- ballotine of ham hock and langoustine with quail egg beignet and fennel pollen- and about fell over. What was a ballotine and why would she want fennel pollen on it? _

"_Might I make a suggestion?" Dunn asked, voice overly slimly as he invaded her personal bubble to look over her shoulder._

_Ha ha ha! No. "No, you may not." Molly returned mildly as she skimmed the lists on the heavily embossed and leather wrapped menu in her good hand. _

"_Rather closed minded from a girlfriend of Sherlock Holmes." He stated and Molly could literally feel Mother Holmes focus all of her peripheral attention on this soft spoken discussion as her turn came to order. _

_If it could be described as such. _

_She tried not to swear._

"_You bet your tacky Vanquish suit, I am." She snipped, taking the plunge and not clarifying which part he was referring too. She did not like how he overly caressed the word 'girlfriend', as if surprised Sherlock could procure one. Idiot man. Sherlock had enough brooding allure to pull hundreds of girls just by his appearance alone. He wasn't a traditional looker, but the man had tall, dark, and dangerous down to an art- probably unconsciously to boot because if he knew…he'd probably barricade himself in his flat to die. It was just the 'getting to know you' bit that he flubbed…either purposely or not, she couldn't tell. He was awkward and rude at the same time but if he could ever just plug his hole for twenty minutes, her goofball detective could be rolling in girls. She should be counting her blessings he could only, by his own admittance, handle one 'friable female prone to excessive bouts of speciousness and demonstrative neediness' at a time. _

_She would not be renting out her spot anytime soon, thank you._

_Dunn was just plain amused. "So you _are_ his girlfriend." Molly sighed pointedly, shifting her cast encased fingers about till her middle finger was surreptitiously displayed along her menu so only he could see. "Well that's not very nice." _

"_It's not supposed to be. And how do you even know Sherlock?" She hissed, hoping and praying Violet Holmes was as engrossed in her ordering as she appeared to be- God, they haven't even ordered dinner and Molly was ready for the check. _

"_We attended university together. Wilkes, Holmes, and myself." He explained and Molly found herself intrigued despite her resistance to this little puke of a man. Sherlock never spoke of his days before Bart's. He never hinted at, nor mentioned a childhood, his family- outside of his brown nosing brother- his education, nothing. She had never asked either, never pried because she could recognize his desire to not share them. The only hints she ever got of pre-Bart's were a few despairing comments from Lestrade- she hated them because Sherlock had been a shattered wreck- so naturally she would be curious, but she bit her lip, refusing to allow herself to cave and ask. If Dunn had resulted in anything good for Sherlock, he'd still be on the consulting detective's list of people to annoy…_

_Like Lestrade. _

_Molly's personal experience with Dunn was remote, removed, and largely based on the text in the electronic ledgers of cops and lawyers who pulled case files. That is…until Little went to trial._

_So she wouldn't trust him. She would ignore him._

_And then ask Sherlock about him later._

_Dunn must have gotten the hint she was chucking at him like a brick to the face, and didn't say anymore. In all actuality, it could have been because Sherlock's mummy sat not more than a person away and would not welcome condescending, douchebag remarks on her condescending tosser of a son- and Molly said that with all the love in the world directed at the six foot brat who, by all accounts, seemed inclined to believe he popped into existence without the mess of adolescence ever making an appearance. _

_The night was tanking._

Dinner had been most excruciating.

This, she remember with acute clarity.

She had refused to discuss Sherlock in any capacity that would actually do the man justice- a crime itself- because praising Sherlock meant mentioning all the amazing things he did, and simple people were repulsed by his enjoyment of solving grisly murders and mysteries. Of him sticking gloved fingers into maggot infested stomachs and grinning in glee at finding partially digested poisons. She couldn't talk about him freely, so she wouldn't talk about him at all.

Not even to his mother, who asked the most innocent of questions that made her feel like complete crap because it was his _mother_ for Christ's sake. The woman probably didn't see him all that much, or that's what Molly figured. He was kind of a hermit when he wasn't hogging her lab or harassing the cops- this made her nervous because of his past history, but he was grown man and was fully aware that she would not hesitate to cripple him if he so much as looked at drug dealer twice and she found out. So while his mother asked in vain about her son- what does Sherlock like to do? How many cases is he getting? How has he been? Is he well?- Molly struggled, before caving in and responding, endeavoring to keep her responses polite, omitting the juicer bits in exchange for more PC, more pro-Sherlock propaganda, extremely aware of the unfriendly ears ringing the table.

She didn't miss Mycroft's inscrutable looks either. Hey, he could be answering these questions; she knew he talked to Sherlock several times a week, much to the detective's consternation and flamboyant complaining. Alas, he kept his trap firmly shut on the subject of his brother, leaving her to tread carefully in this predator infested atmosphere. So she took great pleasure in watching her sister torture him in the midst of his conversations with that Wilkes guy, Cruella, and whoever the three other people were- politics was a shockingly small clique of popular kids considering how much influence and affect these people had, and Molly was enjoying watching Mycroft delicately dodge and parry her sister's verbal throat shots. Big sis had been pissed beyond comprehension that she had to spend her evening dinning with this group, when she could have been wolfing down a quarter-pounder with cheese at a sticky plastic table with just Molly- they both had seriously regretted going first class. But noooo, Molly had fallen head first into a sodding Holmes trap employed by the matriarch of the family, and Mycroft did nothing to assist her in assuaging the inquisitiveness of his mother and fellow supper goers. She hoped the linguist was giving him the mother of all headaches.

Serves him right, that wanker. He should be the one explaining to his mum that his little brother was doing very well, that he was clean, and that he was as healthy as Molly had ever seen him. They should not be dancing around the worry of past drug use at crowded table of pompous nobodies who were not friendlies to Sherlock, and this was ALL Mycroft's fault! He should have been updating his mother. Not Molly.

Not some remote pathologist that happened to keep tabs on the man-child for the greater good of London and its outliers.

Mrs. Holmes, despite Molly grappling to fit her into a box, a frame of sorts so she could understand what she dealing with- because this older woman seemed both aloof and terribly interested at the same time, as weird as that sounded- expressed herself as genuinely wanting to know about her son and it hurt that Molly felt such hesitancy to share. She felt awful about it actually, but seeing Dunn pause to listen when she clarified that yes, Sherlock had been doing great, that he was always great, steeled her resolve all that much more. Her intuition, her gut, had been nagging her to keep the distance between Dunn's awareness about Sherlock as expansive as possible. He seemed like such a weasel, like an Anderson with a brain and a record for inflicting damage- this last bit she had intimate knowledge on since she couldn't forget how he made such a sound argument against her using acid in a last ditch effort to save herself. She wasn't terribly crazy about the idea of spending time near this lawyer, anyhow. The man was the enemy- she was not being overdramatic- his job description not holding near enough water for her to consider gracing him with the benefit of the doubt. Little had ripped her world apart, and this man had defended him with all the passion of a person who believed that monster innocent.

When her food had arrived, Molly had merely picked at it. She didn't touch the wine the sommelier had suggested go with her funky stuffed ravioli- because she knew how much of a pathetic light weight she was and keeping her wits about her had become almost as imperative as breathing for the duration of that meal from Hell.

A few days after this excruciating night, Lestrade had asked her what it was like 'putting on the Ritz' and Molly could barely withhold her full body shudder before admitting that she had been praying for a mini genocide that would have called her away.

Nope, that would have been too much of a convenience, a blessing. Instead she had been forced to suffer! She was being punished, she knew it. For laughing at Sherlock's poorly timed character analysis of the gang member brought in to identify the body of his mate. Apparently, inquiring if the position of another man's sagging pants had any correlation with the mourning of an assassinated rapper and how that translated roughly into 'half-mast' grieving was not something to laugh about in the morgue.

Molly had actually hid in the lab the rest of the day, worried a complaint was going to be filed against her. It wasn't her fault Sherlock was funny at the most inappropriate times.

It didn't help that he just stood there, politely curious expression smoothing over his face as she hacked out a poorly disguised giggle while holding the modesty sheet up for the man to view the body.

She was either going to Hell, or she was going to be picked off by a group of thugs and then delivered to Hell.

Surprise, surprise, it had been the latter in a world class restaurant and not a scummy back alley.

_Molly was counting down the minutes. Dinner was almost over- she based this off the amount of fine china to be had where once there was food- well…food art, which was frustratingly lacking in satisfaction because of the stupid chintzy artistry- and she could perceptibly feel Mrs. Holmes dissatisfaction for her as a person._

_It…it actually bothered her. _

_A great deal._

_Seeing the mother of her best friend become further detached as each question was rebuffed or sidestepped made her ache just that much more. Boxed in and weary, Molly swallowed dryly as she shimmied around one more request for information on Sherlock. Cold eyes held hers and she gulped as they x-rayed her soul._

_When she got out of there, she was going to beat Sherlock with a stick for not talking to his mother more often._

"_Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's been a real pleasure this evening, but if Molly and I wish to make it to our show, we'll need to take our leave." Her sister announced over the table and Molly could have fainted from relief._

_Sweet, merciful- oh thank you! She was getting to leave-_

"_Yes, I need to be off as well. I would be most happy to escort you out." Dunn schmoozed and she internally started swearing like a boatload of sailors denied shore leave after months at sea. _

"_How kind of you." She managed between stiff lips- scumbag lawyer._

"_Ladies, Mr. Dunn. As always." Mycroft stood with the rest of the men as she and her sister made to stand, immediately having their chairs pulled back by the wait staff. Their goodbyes were tersely given and tersely reciprocated, and Molly withheld her wince as Mother Holmes withering look settled on her person._

_Talk about a bungled opportunity. She just wanted to go home. _

_Dunn was all smiles- the phony - as they weaved their way back out into the main dining area. "Well that was a fantastically painful meal." He opened the second they hit the foyer. "I've never seen so much…tension…outside a courtroom."_

_Her sister was livid, Molly could tell as she observed her older sister oh, so carefully check her mobile. "You've obviously forgotten how you managed to think your way through putting on pants this morning." _

_Molly was too wound up to laugh. _

"_As if it were my fault I had a client with whom you heartily disagree with. I can't please everybody." Dunn offered, slipping swiftly into his coat and extracting Molly's purple pea coat from the hands of a tux wearing assistant. Molly gnashed her teeth as he held it up for her to slip into._

_Stupid…presumptuous… _

"_You keep making light of an incident that nearly cost me my life, Mr. Dunn." Molly snarled softly at him as she snatched her coat from his hands and slid into it herself. "I do not find this conversation at all appropriate, so if you would mind taking yourself out, that would be great."_

"_Oh, but I couldn't possibly! Not now when I'm getting to see the full spectrum of Molly Hooper." He grinned, flashing his irritatingly perfect white teeth at her. "It's fascinating to see how you tick, how you react, because it just adds more to the understanding."_

_Her sister paused in her texting, but remained silent, and Molly lifted her chin, hiding her confusion. What the frick was he babbling about?_

_Dunn sensed it too, could feel the enthralled audience he had in her and her sister. When he stepped into her personal space, Molly ruthlessly stomped down on the urge to back up, to back down. But when he leaned in and fairly whispered in her ear- too close, too close, too sodding close- she struggled to not knee him in the stones. "Do not think for one second that I'm fooled by the hit and run cover story. I know what role Sherlock played, and I know his brother had a clever hand in burying it beneath the horror of your battered appearance."_

_She narrowed her eyes as her brow wrinkled into a frown. "What are you talking about?"_

_Dunn seemed both delighted, and agitated by this news. "Oh, dear, he didn't tell you did he? No surprise. Sherlock was always bit dubious in his methods. A bit short on fuse, a bit high on anger."_

_Molly felt her temper, which had been gurgling under the skin since she realized who this man was, start to override her better senses. "You know nothing." She hissed moving to press past him. _

"_Wrong." He breathed, eyes alight as he turned to follow her toward the doors, brushing against her side and making her want to writhe in disgust. "I'm not the foolish little girl that loves a monster."_

_Ooooooo….oh, she could- "You're a bit old to be name calling. Sod off will you?" She said mildly, looking around for her sister, who was right behind her. "Should we call a cab?"_

_Her sister was glaring at Dunn, though, and Molly felt a cold spike of dread at the inquiring glint in her eyes. "A…monster?" She asked lowly._

_Shit._

_Dunn was a master at manipulation, very much like Sherlock actually, but his charade was an utter lie, whereas Sherlock's wasn't unless he chose otherwise, and Molly was scolding herself for letting this conversation drag on in the first place. There were some things, some incredibly important things, which she had not bothered to share with her family about the man that infiltrated her lab and her life. She never talked about his body part experimenting, his nipping of level five bio-hazards. She never breathed a word about the drugs…or how she dove in right beside him to keep his head above water. It was dangerous to expound on these habits of Sherlock to other people, and her sister would not tolerate seeing Molly doing this again, taking care of a drug addict- he was clean! He was clean! But this would mean jack to big sis. Once had been more than enough and there were no strenuous ties to family this time. "He isn't a fan of Sherlock, Kate. Don't listen to his bitter wind bagging. He lost the case-"_

"_For now." Dunn interjected smoothly and Molly snapped her jaw shut. "His day is coming." _

_What?_

_For now? _

"_What?" She finally bit, souring even more. This man…_

"_This has been a long time in the making, Molly." He…cooed at her. Who coos like that? "Sherlock has been breaking laws and having big brother back there covering for him for years. This last stunt has just been the initiative that's tipped the scales." Dramatic goon. _

"_You're full of it. And still a sore loser." Molly shrugged him off- tried too. He didn't need to know she was mentally running around in panicked circles at his knowing too much. Funny, she dealt with bigger ghouls than this sharp dressed lawyer weekly- Sherlock…and his brother on occasion- but this guy had her more skittish than the Holmes boys had managed in a long time while trying. _

_She did not thank him for it. _

"_What do you mean breaking laws?" Her sister asked and Molly felt the hairs on her arms and neck start to rise. God, she loathed the fact that she wasn't inherently quick enough to stop this completely._

_That didn't stop her from trying however. "Ignore him. He's been digging at me all night." She stated with feeling and hoped big sis's natural proclivity to protect would override her curiosity on Sherlock for now. _

"_What other kind of meaning could you possibly construe from 'breaking laws'?" He smirked, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he shimmied around Molly's protest. "The gent is a crook, a conman, a liar and a drug addict that only survived his last binge because you happened to show up. He's been hauled in on charges ranging from holding to assault with a deadly weapon- that last one isn't official by the way. And most recently, he has managed to outmaneuver this particular charge once more-"_

_Molly sighed loudly and pointedly, playing it cool. "You are trying a bit too hard, Mr. Dunn."_

"_I could say the same to someone as blindingly loyal as you are, _Molly_."_

_She didn't rise to him as she met his gleaming eyes with a hard look of her own. "Like I said…a bit too hard."_

_His focus started to cut into her, and Molly only jutted her chin. "He is as dangerous as he is unpredictable, and that unpredictability strolls hand in hand with carelessness. He will ruin you."_

_Molly desperately ignored her sister's sharp intake of breath, realizing that any concession in her now would be seen as weakness to this…snake. So she plucked a leaf out of Sherlock's handbook and offered up a leer of her own, shamming for all she was worth despite how piercingly her heart was banging in her ears. "Unlikely, Mr. Dunn."_

_At her refusal to bend, to give, Dunn just met her with his own stalwart barring, refusing to allow her to maneuver them into safer waters, but not attempting to engage her further. Their check would have gone on had it not been for the arrival of his ride. She watched as a white town car slipped up alongside the walk outside, and Dunn woofed a laugh as he tipped an imaginary hat at her. "Until next time, ladies." With that, he was out the door and disappearing into the depths of the sleek vehicle._

_Molly didn't watch the car pull away, she had bigger problems in the form of one steaming sister. _

_Oh, lord…_

"_I can explain." She offered up quickly as she met the thunderous expression battering into her soul._

"_A drug addict? Sherlock is a drug addict?" She spat in a trembling voice, face darkening into a splotchy mess as she repressed her fury out of the sheer force of her will and a deep rooted respect for the establishment bred into her by her job. "Were you never going to tell me?"_

_Molly cast a look about them, hating the fact that they were standing in the grandest entryway she'd ever seen in her life and about to tumble headlong into a battle royal with quite possibly the meanest fighter on the planet. "Kate, please! Let me explain-"_

"_I wish you would!" The linguist cracked across her babbling, cutting her right off. "Are you completely stupid? Are you out of your damn mind?" It was harrowing and vexing that big sis had managed to perfect the whisper yell that their mother excelled in. _

_It sucked._

"_Not here." Molly quickly said, bringing her hands up before her as if she could physically push the animosity between them back. "I'll explain!"_

_It was like she had turned on a switch, because before she knew it, a clawing grip around her cast encased wrist was jerking her through the glass doors out onto the walk and down the street and into the nearest alleyway. Molly's whimper of pain at the rough treatment of her hand paled in comparison to the fight she knew was coming._

_That sucked even more._

"_Explain. Everything. Now." Her older sister whirled on her after pulling her a sufficient way down the empty passage. _

_She rubbed ruefully at her hand, mind fizzing out on useless excuses while producing nothing substantial to quell the raging she-beast before her. "Dunn is an idiot." She began and watched the all-consuming frenzy in her sister's eyes ignite into cold fury at her attempted divergence. _

"_Is Sherlock a drug user?"_

"_Kate-"_

"_Is he?!" She demanded viciously._

_Oh, boy. "He has a history…" She started, wincing as she spoke._

"_A __**recent **__history?"_

_Molly just looked at her, too afraid to admit to this because she knew the reaction that she would get. Yes…he had a recent history… "He's been clean for almost a year now." She offered instead, messaging her throbbing hand and the itchy flesh just beneath the hard edge of her cast._

_This news did not soothe the ire in big sis, as she had hoped in vain that it would. "You…you- you stupid- are you out of your damn mind? He's a user! You can't save everyone Molly, and I'll be damned if I let this man do to you what Mark-"_

"_Sherlock isn't like that!"_

"_I don't give a rat's ASS what Sherlock isn't like, Molly! That want for the high NEVER goes away!" She snarled ferociously back at her. Shocking how quickly the tables turned from biggest supporter, to biggest threat in less than twenty minutes. It just made matters worse that she was well within her rights to vent her concerns and demand compliance._

_Very much like a hostage situation._

_Or a Mexican standoff… _

_Molly clenched her teeth. "Sherlock is stronger than Mark. He'd never-"_

"_Stop defending him!" She snapped, teeth clicking hard as she pushed herself into Molly's space. "You said the same exact thing about Mark!"_

"_It's true this time! Sherlock gave them up! He's clean! I see him all the time and he. Is. Clean!"_

"_A zebra can't change its stripes, Molly."_

"_You don't know even know him!" Molly snapped back. "He's my best friend! He has been at my side for years and never once have you heard any denouncement about him until tonight! And from the lips of a slime ball lawyer! Why are you so hung up on his words and yet mine mean nothing to you?"_

"_A conman? A thief? A liar and a drug addict! What am I supposed to think? You told me that he was brilliant." Her sister's strangled yell bespoke old wounds and bad memories. "Who the fricking hell does that sound like!? Hmm!? Who? Because last I checked, Mark used to launder money and steal to support his habits, and from you no less!"_

"_Sherlock isn't Mark." Molly stated softly, not allowing that cruel comment to burrow beneath her skin and nest. "He would never do that."_

_The silence pressed into her ears and down on her shoulders as she squared off with the only person who knew the intimate horror of watching someone die of habitual use of narcotics. Her sister, her biggest champion and number one defender was almost genetically programmed to fight for her, but this time, the enemy was a misconception that Molly herself stood before in defense of the truth. They were on opposing sides for the first time in some ten years._

_She felt sickened by this, because the last time had been over their brother, who Kate had been forced to give up on._

_And Molly too stupid to walk away from. _

"_You have got to trust that I know what I'm doing, Kate." She told her. _

_She watched the slow fall of proud shoulders and the shuttered expression overtake her older sister's normally jovial face. "No."_

"_Kate, please-"_

"_No." She shook her head. "I can't. If our brother could screw you over…"_

"_I was eighteen. It doesn't matter anymore."_

_Her sister hissed. "It will always matter. He took advantage of you! How do you know Sherlock won't do the same thing? If not for drugs, then what else? You're too nice, Molly, and we both know what sort of personality's addicts are. Is he using you for something else? Something only you can provide? Something he wants or needs?"_

_God, did that comment ever hurt._

_Talk about unearthing major dormant fears in one go…_

"_You don't know do you?" Her sister straightened, face contorting in pain and consternation as she eyeballed her._

_Molly groaned. "What do I have to tell you to get you to believe me? Sherlock is cranky! He's a mad genius with a soft spot for the macabre! He craves puzzles, and the more challenging the better. He routinely helps the cops solve cases; he's tight with Detective Inspector Greg Lestrade of New Scotland Yard and frequently works alongside most of the other DI's in the city. He goofs about in my lab and morgue testing theories and helping me accurately sleuth out the details of my work. He's mean, and tough, and cares beyond what everyone seems to think him capable of. He stayed with me every late night I had to work after I returned to work from being savaged in my own 'office'. He pushes me to do better, he tests me. He is a brat, a toddler, and my best friend!" Her rant had steadily built until she was all but yelling down the alleyway at her silent sister, funneling all the irritation at continuously being second guessed into her heated dialogue. "I'm not dropping him. He isn't perfect and he has screwed up more than I'm aware of, but I will not be dropping him! I wouldn't when he first showed up. I wouldn't when my coworkers threatened me. I wouldn't when Joe demanded me, and I won't because you are telling me."_

"_Molly-" Her sister tried._

"_Kate." She interrupted. "I am not a baby; I'm twenty-eight years old. I will make mistakes and I will deal with the fallout from them. If you are going to allow the vilifying thoughts of a lawyer, who defended Boris Little and __**condemned**__ me in a court of law, to alter your view points on someone close to me, despite my objections and protests, then we have a problem." Molly was shaking as she drew the line before her very sister, feeling like a traitor for siding with Sherlock- who, as always, wasn't even here._

_This was not how it was supposed to be, this was not how this evening was supposed to pan out._

"_I will not pick people over each other. You are my sister, and I love you. But I will not toss another life away because you think I'm too silly to see that real life has a dark side."_

"_Molly, that's not why I'm upset." Her sister huffed at her, visibly trying to swallow her temper. If they hadn't been in the middle of their most explosive row this year, Molly would have been amused at the political linguist struggling to curtail her emotions. There really was credence to the whole idea that no matter how much training, poise, and professionalism, a sibling will always be able to slither under another sibling's skin and irritate the ever loving crap out of them. "I'm terrified that you have taken the wrong man into your heart and that you'll be broken by him."_

…_oh…_

…_what?_

_Molly could only stare, brain having startled and taken flight, the flaky useless organ, leaving her to man the ship. _

_Her sister snorted after the silence stretched on into the constipated stage. "I talked to mum, and I can read between the lines, you know." _

_Mum knew? "Mum...?" _

_Shit._

_Her sister gave her such a tired look. "Mum is good for a blow by blow play. You talk to her enough about your days, and those days usually include Sherlock. I would have to be blind and dumb not to see your crush blooming months ago."_

"_I was dating Joe months ago." Molly's clarification came out with a snap and crackle in her voice. "I don't like Sherlock."_

"_Lie to someone else, Molly. You can't fool me." _

_She was not lying._

_She swore she wasn't._

_She wasn't._

_How come everyone could see this? Everyone just looked at her and took note of him- usually they just noticed him because he was mad as a hatter- did a little mental math and arrived at the same conclusion. Everyone did!_

_Tara and by association Wade. Nic, Mike, and Tim. Bernard would rather she join a covenant- he told her this yesterday when Tara had made a few too many suggestive comments about warming hands on the chesticular fires of a certain consulting detective._

_Molly, despite how embarrassing the whole thing was, broke down into uncontrollable laughter over the idea of 'chesticular fires' because it made instant sense. _

_She wasn't laughing now, however. Her sister was practically accusing her of fraternizing with the enemy- big sis's words- and she was just going to have to assume her mother was on board too because it was her mum and she knew everything._

_Hell! Even Joe had foamed about this- he was wrong at the time, but she was chucking his opinion into the whole lot now because…_

_Because…she had a huge problem._

_Oh, dear God no…_

_Please, please, please no…_

_Suddenly the alleyway was very cold, and Molly remembered it was December. It was supposed to be cold, but this chill was different as it froze the tissue of her lungs and seized the muscles around her heart, making it painful to expand her chest to breath. "I'm not lying." She labored to push out, clinging to this excuse like it was the last shred of hope she would ever manage to conjure again, in her life. _

_Period. _

_Maybe if she said it enough…_

_Her sister growled as she flung her hands up over her head. "Yes! You are! We've spent the better part of one whole evening discussing this_ _man! His family at dinner is one thing, but afterwards- right now?! You are prepared to go to war for this guy, ready to fight your own sister to defend him! Molly, look at yourself!"_

_No! That wasn't it. She was just doing what she always did! She always protected him! Always! Silly infatuations or like liking him had nothing to do with it. "It's not what you think. He's my best friend. He's different and that spurs people into saying the cruelest of things about him!" She began, trying to build the steam to make her sister sodding SEE. "We are just friends!"_

_The look she received was disheartening. "If that were true, I wouldn't be standing here infuriated that you're crushing on a…on a…wacko! A drug dinged lunatic!"_

_Molly's hackles started to rise. "Please, don't."_

"_There!" Kate barked, jabbing a finger at her. "Right there! I say one thing against him and you're up in arms! Open your eyes! If I'm able to notice this, Molly, you have no excuse to lie, so knock it off!"_

_And imagine that, she did see, she could see._

_Molly didn't thank her for it._

_Her sister was brilliant with languages, silver tongued, and intuitive. She used her talents to snag a cushy job, and made herself invaluable by translating those skills throughout her career, not only in oral languages, but in body language. Katherine Hooper could read people as if they were open books, and Molly had been told repeatedly that she was as open and exposed as a dull kids picture book._

_Sherlock was a jerk._

_And the horrifying reality of it was that he was a jerk that she apparently..._

_No…_

"_No…" Molly said, shaking her head. "I can't like him, Kate." As if that would make it true._

"_Well, that would be smart of you. A drug addict is not a stable companion to choose for one's self." Her sister grumbled; face stonily taking in the existential crisis before her in a black bargain cocktail dress. "But seeing as I had to convince you of this, I'm starting to question how sharp you really are."_

_Molly didn't hear her. Her mind was already a swirling mass of that blooming panic she had been feeling for weeks, the realization that everybody had been, in essence, effing right, and perhaps the sickening acceptance that she was going to get creamed and it was going to hurt._

_She…liked him._

_She liked Sherlock Bloody Holmes._

_Shit._

The ride home, Molly couldn't remember it. They had scrapped going to the play- unofficially, halfway through dinner with the Holmeses and company- as neither sister really wanted to deal with the other.

Ah, sibling unpredictability at its absolute finest.

They had parted ways with a grunt and uttered threat from big sis about 'we aren't finished with this' as Molly had stepped from the car. As far as Molly was concerned, any chance at redemption had absconded right to Hell with all her dignity, sanity, and intelligence with the onset of her little back alley revelation. One does cherish the moments of clarity while standing next to a bulging kip full of rotting Ritz patron table scraps the likes of which hobos approached suspiciously.

She was a moron.

A right, stupid, foolish, silly heart with no brains between the ears, moron. A proper idiot.

The abuse didn't sooth her soul, didn't take the edge off her panic. She could remember trying everything to get her mind to just. move. on. To not dwell over the grim acceptance that she just signed her heart up for disappointment.

That she had broken her own vow to never look at Sherlock Bloody Holmes as anything but a precious friend.

It certainly didn't help that he was so emotionally polarizing that her feelings were going to get a work out from being slapped to utter shit in his 'care'. Years of experience made it clear why she had slogged so hard after Joe with Sherlock whirling about like a giant bat in that coat of his, and it was because her defenses were starting to falter in the face of his brutal handling of her.

He wasn't kind- he was never nice, but it had never mattered before because she could just sigh, snort, or tell him to sod off with a smile and be done with it.

BUT NOOO! Now, her feelings were suddenly tender and fragile and his sneering hurt just a bit _too _much.

And this was before her private acknowledgement that she liked him.

She was so stupid.

She picked the Humpty Dumpty of emotive klutzes to pine for, and the fear, the worry of what she was going to do had kept her up late into the night she couldn't recall how many times.

She had been anxious over him deducing it from just her face the second she stepped into the lab- why, she had no idea. Sherlock was a bit of a blind dunce when it came to feelings if he wasn't anticipating them for a proper reaction. Had she been thinking with all boilers fired, she could have slept secure in the knowledge that he would probably never know unless she spilled the beans like many blonde twits in her _Lifetime_ programs.

Her avoidance would only draw his attention because he loathed it when she did that, but how could she face him with this baggage dangling over her head?

It was so uncomfortable and awkward and wrong.

It was Sherlock, for Christ's sake. Her buddy, her pal. The guy that threw temper tantrums because she watched goofy shows and ate candy. The man that sulked when denied his way and fairly pranced with the discovery of new data. The person that blew her mind with his incredible intelligence that seemed limitless and ever growing. He helped roll the bodies when she couldn't manage. He non-apologized by being accommodating before stealing something in the most convoluted charade she had ever witnessed for something so compassionate and simple. She had seen him twist himself into incensed knots over the smallest of transgressions, and fairly wallow in laziness in the next moment.

They had been through so much. She had stayed by his side when the drugs overcame him. She had pulled him back up when his great mind did terrible things to him. She had cuddled close when the world hit too hard and had smiled in the face of adversity for a man too radically groundbreaking to be considered 'normal'. She sought him out for advice and camaraderie on matters of business, work, and life. She valued his opinions- rude as they were most of the time the prat- and listened when his bratty antics made a lick of sense.

She cared about him, cared for him, because how he had not died of starvation or dehydration this far into the game would remain one of life's great mysteries. She seriously doubted it was his sheer force of will- he could be stubborn to the point of outliving God if need be, just to have the last word, but try and hug him and he crumbled into a stroppy mess worthy of only the biggest of babies.

How she adored him.

He made her laugh, he made her think, and he accepted her as she was- quirked humor and odd conversations barely making him blink, instead, he chose to pick on her about some tidbit nobody would have cared to notice about something else entirely.

He was her confidant, her security blanket, and her friend.

So why the bloody hell would she want to gamble with that friendship? Why would she allow herself to wander, dazed and confused, down that path of no return?

She could see him getting a sex change operation easier than she could see him accepting her unwanted affections- for the record, it would be strictly for data purposes, as Sherlock had the libido of R2-D2.

Her fear was justifiable and completely understandable.

She would lose him if he found out. He would pull away, unsure and uncomfortable if she turned a doe eyed look of want on him.

Sherlock wouldn't tolerate this very well.

And that scared her even more.

So much so, that she had returned to work from her dinner date in the ninth circle of Hell, strained and quiet.

Sherlock hadn't reacted well, but for obvious reasons.

_Molly rubbed ruefully at her eye as she checked the transfer slip with her body packet. Just her luck, Oxford shipped her back the wrong body. The family was going to be pissed, since they were supposedly coming to claim him today._

_Maybe if Bernard returned early from his lectures, she could have him handle the fallout- people were more likely to accept his excuses than hers she had found out, as he was old and seasoned and didn't look like a brain dead teeny bopper with an ugly jumper. _

_She was mean to herself. It was uncalled for._

_Groaning, Molly reached out and plucked the phone up from its cradle and tapped in the number scribbled near illegibly at the bottom of the slip. Family contact information 'must be meticulously recorded', her rear. _

_She was staring off into space, listening to the ringing, when the double gray doors bumped open and Sherlock came trudging in, a dark look angling his features into quite the brooding picture. Steel blues flickered, locked onto her and hardened and Molly promptly couldn't hear the answering machine click on and start to ramble._

_Oh, crud…_

_She slowly dropped the receiver back into its cradle, very aware of how she would squeak if she spoke. _

_Sherlock was angry._

_Everything from the way he carried himself, the angle of his shoulders, the set of his jaw, to the glitter in his eyes personalized his fury, something she dreaded weathering. Especially today. _

_She was compromised for the day, week, month, year… or three it didn't matter because she was forever compromised with him. Nothing was ever easy with her consulting ulcer. "Hey Sherlock…" She greeted softly, sinking her gaze to her hands, pretending to go back to work where in actuality, she retraced the already written letters with her pen as she fought not to fidget nervously._

_He didn't grunt at her- he didn't say anything- as he pulled his arms from that coat of his in such a controlled move that she could almost feel the coiling energy around him as he dumped it on the stool closest to his microscope. She was preparing to accept that it was going to be one of THOSE days where he would simmer and glare at the world from behind his favorite post and that she could start to ease off the hesitancy around him. This wasn't anything new with him, and she had taken to ignoring his strops in the past with passing efficiency and complete disregard for his drama._

_She could fake it today, probably. He'd be too focused on what has set him afoul to care what had her shrinking around him on eggshells-_

"_You offended my mother." His deep baritone surprised her- he usually never opened his mouth unless to nag or be a huge prick when he was like this and today seemed to be leaning toward the latter- but it was what he said that had her crashing through her surprise into instant remorse. "She was-"_

"_I am so sorry, Sherlock. I-I didn't know what to say, and she kept asking about you but that huge dickmouth Dunn would suddenly become the most attentive listener and- and I'm just really sorry." She burst out, eyes glued securely to the papers right under her nose. If she timed her breathing just right, she could keep the slow blurring of the words to a minimum, buying her time until she could bolt for the ladies with excuses he wouldn't believe anyway._

_Oh, she was such a mess of a girl, and completely off her rocker._

"_Molly," Sherlock called, sounding a whole hell of a lot closer, but she was too chicken to look up. "Do shut up."_

_Her jaw clicked audibly, and she closed her eyes in resignation. _

_She hated this. She hated this meek, wrecked thing she has become all in the span of a few weeks. She needed to get a therapist; she needed to figure out where she had been damaged so badly that it was starting to affect her ability to withstand trying situations and Sherlock at his most surly. She straightened when she realized her shoulders were curled in, and heard Sherlock sigh._

_A crinkling followed by a thud on her desk and Molly's eyes snapped right open- knowing Sherlock like she did, finding a sack of cockroaches spilling out across her files was on this side of completely possible- and immediately zeroed in on an orange bag with a very familiar logo._

_Her breath caught in her throat for a second as she took in what she was really seeing before she snapped her head up to look at him. _

_His face was still clouded with his temper shifting about just under the surface- like an overdue volcano really- but the area around his eyes, from the pucker between his eyebrows to the slight scrunching just beneath those steel blues, gave him a more…worried wasn't the right word…_

_Then his mouth pulled down, just a bit, around the edges and for that fleeting moment, Sherlock Holmes looked upset and her heart ached before he pulled himself back behind his neutral mask of restless indifference._

"_Do not misunderstand me, even though I know I'm asking for miracles here, these will always be appalling being that they are contrived from utter garbage." He said, voice low and even as he stuck his hands into his pockets. "But you, unfortunately, lack any sort of cultured taste and like them."_

_Alright… _

_She let her gaze sink to the huge bag of Kitkats, heart starting to slowly pound louder and louder between her ribs._

"_Th-thank…you?" She was tremendously baffled by this odd boon that outstripped his douche bagging on her partialities, as Sherlock had never once-_

"_Shut up." He snapped glaring right at her, pointedly enunciating each word and Molly couldn't help the familiar scowl that pulled at her lips. _

_What a big- "I was thanking you, you butthead." _

"_I'm not finished, Molly, and you won't stop thinking." He rammed her complaint right into the ground as he flared to be heard and she sat back in her chair to make room for him and his mini outbursts. "The sweets are disgusting, and I am averse to the fact that I actually purchased them myself, but seeing as what you were forced to endure last night, they seemed like the most straightforward method to conveying…sympathies." _

_She felt her mouth move for a second, at a loss. Sympathies? "Sympathies? I had an unexpected meal with your family and friends." She felt she deserved a Nobel prize for her foray into the affluent spheres of society because they didn't turn her into gravlax when she skipped the caviar. Granted, she offended his mother and that had to be some serious marks against her._

_Was Sherlock mad because of that? He opened with telling her that she had offended his mum._

_Oh, that made her feel bad…_

"_No, no! Not my 'friends'." He immediately corrected, his mouth twisting into a sneer over the word he detested so much, but in this instance, she couldn't summon the feelings to be offended. She would not want anyone associating her and the people from last night in such casually familiar terms either. Especially Dunn…_

_That horrible little puke of a man …_

_This was something she had to address with her consulting detective however, among other things…_

"_You went to school with Colin Dunn." She watched him still before her and Molly felt like if Sherlock had it his way- his ideal status- she would have never found out otherwise. This motionlessness in him did not last for very long- it never did- because he exploded into movement by pacing, pacing, pacing. Molly's head followed him as he plodded the width of the lab before her desk, back and forth, twirling on a dime just before running out of room, all the while not saying anything. This was a new Sherlockism that she had yet to encounter, leaving her treading in unfamiliar waters with him, and not for the first time, uncertain whether to speak- if she weren't crazy, and this was a month or two prior, she'd just poke at him until he imploded and let rip what was eating him. Now, she just waited on him, observing how his normally mobile face was as smooth as glass, and how she could physically see and feel the roiling agitation in his shoulders, his back, and the way his hands pulsed into slow fists from time to time before he caught them in the small of his back in a controlled effort. She would have just let him go, let him work his energy off, allowing him to arrive at whatever conclusion his gigantic brain was considering if not for the brief flash of emotion before he turned back toward her after another pass. The bulging muscles of his jaw and the eerie gleam in his eye unnerved her, and she couldn't help but call to him if only to break whatever spell he was under. "Sherlock?" _

"_Precisely why I brought you those things. Haven't you been listening?" He barked at her so suddenly, she stuttered for a second._

_Oh dear, what was this? "I- I guess not." _

_He was muttering, never breaking his repetitive trekking and Molly caught words here and there. 'Mycroft' and 'moron' and 'damage' were his favorites. _

_This had to stop. He was starting to freak her out a bit. He stalked past her again and Molly shifted in her seat for a few moments, second guessing herself the entire time._

_She was so sick of this fear of hers._

_It was just Sherlock. Her prickly, grumpy Sherlock._

_He bought her Kitkats._

"_Sherlock-"_

"_What did he say to you?" He cut across her, stopping just past the edge of her desk, not facing her. So she stared at his back and worried._

"_Dunn? Just…a bunch of rubbish." She hedged, unwilling to shed light on the negative comments that stupid lawyer had spewed about her best friend. "It's was mostly bloated silences after your mother would ask a question about you. Call your mother, Sherlock. She seemed desperate for news on you." Molly slipped in._

"_Mycroft's job." He growled while turning and pinning her down with cold steel blues. "Rubbish isn't a sufficient answer." He wasn't letting her off._

_He was so unfair…_

"_Rubbish is what it was." She quipped back, hearing a faint echo of 'crook, conman, liar, drug addict, monster' in the back of her mind and hating it. "He said nothing worth repeating."_

"_Stop lying!" He bit out savagely. "You're a pathetic liar so don't even attempt it with me."_

"_I'm not lying! He said stupid stuff, made light of my near dying and then babbled on about your talents in a less than flattering light. He was digging at me and it wasn't working-"_

_Sherlock just seemed to keep getting angrier. "Molly-"_

"_What does it matter what he said, Sherlock?" She talked over him, drowning out his wind bagging. "He's a right bastard and I am happy to report I flipped him off for fifteen minutes straight during a particularly dry lecture from some banker guy on investment portfolios."_

_Sherlock was coiled so tightly he was ready to pop from the strain. She could see that, but she was at a loss for what to do about it. Sherlock wasn't exactly an open book, but she could normally judge a lot by the cover he was wearing- the real one…not the fake storyteller he slapped on to get what he wanted out of any given transaction. He was upset, beyond stressed and he had actually bought her candy he habitually laced with poisons to feed to Mike Stamford's lab animals. Molly slowly inhaled, grappling with her own haywire feelings and trying to calm herself down to properly deal with him. If she didn't cool her jets, it would just feed him more, and they would end having a horrible fight that could easily be avoided if one of them just managed to be the adult they were supposed to be._

_Sherlock still thought bugs, rocks, and boogers were cool, so the responsibility of maturity landed squarely on her shoulders. _

_Oh, boy. "Sherlock, just tell me what's wrong." She opened, keeping her tone as soothing as possible lest she rile him even more. "You're upset-"_

"_I'm not upset." He spat, whipping back around to continue his pacing. "Why would I be upset?"_

_Well, genius, you look to be three seconds from a total melt down. "Because I had dinner with your mother and offended her." She opted instead._

_He sighed so hard, he was lucky he didn't expel his own soul. "That was a guaranteed outcome and Mycroft should have perceived that coming from the very beginning seeing as you have this ridiculous compunction to defend me against Dunn's rather truthful recitation of my 'talent's as you so aptly put it." _

_He was talking so fast, it took her some time to catch up. "Oh, yes that's right. I do so enjoy it when the lawyer to my attacker shits all over my friend right in front of my overprotective sister and if you gag like that again when I say 'friend', I'm going to choke you." She hissed at him, ticked that he would do his little cringe thing at her. _

_God, they were so childish, he and she._

_And she liked him, the stupid weirdo._

_And this conversation slash argument really was going no-where. She bit her lip as she thought about what it was he was asking for and decided to bring this to a head._

_Now. _

_Looking down at her paperwork, and the bag of Kitkats, Molly went straight for the kill. "Sherlock, tell you what. I will be happy to inform you of my little chat with Dunn, if you do me a favor and tell me what it was exactly that you did during the trial that had you avoiding the cops and the media." She had specifically chosen not to look at him, but that didn't stop her skin from pricking into goose flesh under the intensity of his steel blues. _

_His shoes creaked as he moved, but she kept her eyes on the bag of candy, waiting on him. The ball was in his court and she would not be helping him along in this case._

_A soft sigh reached her ears. "Did he say?"_

_His voice, his deep, wonderful baritone had the power to warp and befuddle and entrance. The richness of it could sooth and caress, fuel dreams and enthrall listeners. He had a voice that was born to be heard, to be listened too, to be obeyed. It could thunder and reverberate so far down in her bones that her very tissue hummed and she scrambled to keep from melting into a pool of hormones all because he sounded like confidence and self-assurance._

_Tara once slipped and described his golden voice as liquid sex. _

_Molly had only agreed._

_So having the velvet timbre that made him unforgettable sound so…lost…so unsure._

_It was wrong._

_It made her feel cold. _

_The raw, anxious glint his eyes made it even worse._

_So much so that she was on her feet and latched onto his arm before she could even think about it._

"_No." She rushed, sinking her hand into the material of his suit jacket. "No, Sherlock. He just…he said something about a hit and run and threatened you a whole bunch because you're a brat that likes to push the MET's buttons but that is it. He just basically said a bunch of cliché bad guy things meant to make you look bad."_

_Sherlock just looked queasy. _

"_Honestly, he's a little late to the party." She tried, flashing a smile when those pretty steel blue eyes of his refocused on her. "You've had a questionable rep since Lestrade brought you to the lab and you asked me for bits. Plus…we have a deal about all this. Remember?" She hadn't forgotten it._

_Even if Hell was to freeze over before he'd ever spill the beans and enlighten her on this subject- she wasn't about to trust that toe rag Dunn to wipe his own rear, let alone tell her the truth in regards to Sherlock, who he obviously did not like._

_Loser. His loss._

_He snorted, but didn't say anything, choosing to simply let his gaze turn retrospective as his face slackened in thought. His arm was still held captive in her hands and Molly wondered at how he could flap and whine over her breathing near him, yet not care one bit that she was fondling his forearm. Maybe it was too much extra energy to fire up the complaints- not that he ever seemed to be lacking in this area before. Whatever the reason, Sherlock was pulling inward on himself, his temper all but used up as he relaxed within her hold. Emboldened, she started to slowly slide her grip down his arm- ruthlessly ignoring the flutter in her chest from touching him...damn it- and snaked her hand around his fingers before squeezing them. "Your hands are cold." She told him, feeling the roughness of dry skin around his knuckles and joints._

"_Your hands are too warm." He responded absently, making her snuff a laugh._

"_I'm sorry I upset your mum." She tried again, relaxing in relief when he rolled his eyes and huffed. _

"_You would have to be a dullard to keep her happy." He told her before quirking the corner of his lip, apparently not remotely bothered by her less than sterling introduction to Mummy Holmes. "Mycroft does a splendid job of it." Molly was almost positive that this was a compliment to her._

_Almost._

_She sighed, reluctantly letting him go and spinning back to her desk, trying to hide the stupid blush that was starting to burn her neck and cheeks._

_Oh, she could see the problems already with him being so insanely observant._

_Distraction time._

"_Want a Kitkat?" She asked brightly snatching at the bag- that HE BOUGHT!- and making a ton of racket. _

"_No."_

"_You bought them. You must have wanted one." She kept on him, ripping the wrapper open nosily and dipping a hand down into the bag- that HE BOUGHT HER!_

"_No!" He ducked away from her as held one up in his face- from the bag that HE BOUGHT FOR HER!- twisting to face her a safe distance away by his microscope. She could see him building up a rant on the subject of her candy choice and Molly let the happy grin tug at her face as he let loose the nagging floodgates, conveniently ignoring how he BOUGHT HER KITKATS!_

It was a desperately needed reminder for her, that first conversation the night after her earth shaking realization that she liked him.

She liked him and that was terrifying.

She liked Sherlock Bloody Holmes.

So much could go wrong. She could potentially lose everything if she told him.

And with doomsday scenarios running rampant in her mind, scaring her, intimidating her, making her question if she could be a bigger idiot.

She had needed that reminder that Sherlock was still her friend; that he hadn't changed in the course of a few days absence- she had, but he was still wonderfully constipated and rude.

Sherlock had still been normal, and for the time being, that was good enough for her.

He was still her bratty consulting detecting.

He was still her best friend.

* * *

Our darling detective...he bought Molls Kitkats. So cute. What do ya'll think?

pruplup4 and Ybs- THANK YOU!


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